Procedural Foliage Generation for Yerba Buena

Tree customization breakdown for later use in Unity. The entire tree is procedurally generated using geometry nodes. Additionally I am packing all necessary data for custom shading inside of unity into attributes like custom normals and vertex color.

Foliage In-Engine rendering enhancement through custom shading. Cusom normals create smooth lighting, ambient occlusion adds depth and fake translucency adds life to the trees resulting in a more interesting and contrasty appearance.

Geometry Nodes used to generate ivy along curves that can then be hand painted onto specific building shapes.

Ivy placed inside Unity

Procedural Foliage Generation for Yerba Buena

This foliage system was developed as part of a technical art pipeline for a yet-to-be-announced game project. The goal was to build a fully procedural and scalable vegetation solution to create quick and adaptable variation.

Using Blender's Geometry Nodes, I created custom setups for:

1. Procedural Tree Generation – featuring parameterized trunk forms, branching systems, and leaf distribution

2. Procedural Ivy Growth – crawling across surfaces with control over density, randomness, and leaf variation

Each tree mesh uses custom normals to ensure smooth shading and optimized silhouette quality. Additionally, I use vertex color channels to store data such as ambient occlusion, enabling lightweight shading enhancements in-engine and supporting further effects like wind and tree bending.