Showcase Video
Summary
This project is a procedural vine generation tool built in Unity using C#. It allows designers to create vines directly in the scene view by simply clicking, with parameters such as length, thickness, and density fully customizable. The tool was developed to help level designers and artists quickly populate environments with organic, natural-looking vines while maintaining full creative control.
Process
To design the vine generation system, I started from a logical growth model.
The core idea was to let each vine grow step by step through recursive point generation: Every new node is calculated based on the surface normal, direction vector, and collision detection with nearby geometry.
If the next point hits a surface, the direction and normal are adjusted accordingly, allowing the vine to naturally wrap around obstacles or slide along walls.
Before implementing mesh generation, I first visualized the vine nodes using Gizmos in Unity.
This step verified that the recursive logic worked correctly, each node was growing outward along the calculated direction, adjusting when colliding with nearby surfaces.
For each sampled path node, I build a local frame: forward is the tangent of the vine (from previous/next node), and up is the stored surface normal at that node. Orthonormalizing them gives a stable orientation.
Around that node, I generate a ring of vertices in the plane perpendicular to the forward axis.
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I then connect consecutive rings: each pair of adjacent rings forms a strip of quads, which I triangulate to get the final surface. This turns “one center point → one ring” into a continuous tube.
Normals for each vertex are computed from the ring center to the vertex, so lighting reads as a round vine.
After refining the vine generator’s functions and Menu, I then created dissolve and fire effects for the burning vines. Then, I collaborated with the main programmer and level designer to fully integrate the vine system into the game, ensuring the vines worked well in gameplay.
Vine Logic brainstorming sketch
Vine Logic Test
Ring of Vertices
Triangulate & Tube Test
Burning Vine in Game