Prototype Lab

The Prototype Lab is a collection of smaller systems, experiments, and technical tests developed outside of larger production projects. These projects focus on gameplay tools, procedural systems, shaders, interaction prototypes, and workflow experiments.

01 — Procedural Tree Density Generator
Generation Demonstration. Runtime tree spawning responds to configurable density, progression, placement, and performance rules.

Overview

The Procedural Tree Density Generator is an Unreal Engine tool built to populate large outdoor spaces without manually placing every tree. It exposes designer-facing controls for forest composition, progression, density, placement, appearance, and runtime performance.

Design Goal

The goal was to create a reusable system that supports rapid environment iteration while keeping generation predictable and performant. Designers can tune how forests develop over distance, choose weighted mesh groups, and control when trees are spawned or removed around the player.

Unreal Engine Procedural Generation Designer Tooling Runtime Spawning Performance Controls

Technical Implementation

The generator was designed as a configurable tool rather than a fixed one-off system. Tree groups contain multiple mesh variants and separate early- and late-game weights, allowing the forest composition to change as progression advances.

Unreal Engine tree group settings with multiple mesh variants and progression weights
Tree Group Configuration. Multiple mesh variants can be assigned to a group, with independent early- and late-game weights for changing forest composition.
Unreal Engine procedural tree generator progression, pacing, performance, placement, and appearance controls
Generation Parameters. Progression, density, rendering distance, spawn limits, ground tracing, scale variation, and lean angle are exposed for direct tuning.

Key Features

  • Weighted tree groups with multiple mesh variants.
  • Distance-based progression and density curves.
  • Separate starting, peak, and ending density multipliers.
  • Runtime spawn and removal limits to spread work across updates.
  • Ground tracing, player-distance restrictions, scale variation, and lean controls.
  • Configurable rendering distance and update cadence for performance tuning.