Open World Forest Dressing Recipe

This recipe walks through scattering a dense, AAA open-world forest across a 500m×500m terrain with zero performance hit.

Step 1: Assign Terrain Splatmap Layer Mask

In the Main Studio, set Terrain Layer Filter to your Grass/Forest floor layer. This ensures trees and ferns spawn only on fertile soil and avoid rock cliffs.

Step 2: Layered Multi-Pass Scattering

1. Pass 1 (Anchor Trees): Density 80, Min Spacing 6m, Scale 1.0–1.8, Normal Align 0.1.
2. Pass 2 (Undergrowth Ferns & Bushes): Density 400, Min Spacing 1.5m, Scale 0.6–1.1, Normal Align 0.6.
3. Pass 3 (Ground Clutter Rocks & Twigs): Density 800, Min Spacing 0.4m, Scale 0.3–0.7.

Step 3: Combine Undergrowth

Select the Ferns and Clutter parent GameObjects and run Static Mesh Combiner to merge 1,200 draw calls into 2 static meshes.