Low-poly trees for Bevy — game-ready 3D models

Trees in Low-poly Style for Bevy

Low-poly trees arrive in Bevy as a single GLB scene: load it with GltfAssetLabel::Scene(0) on the AssetServer and spawn it under a SceneRoot. The 14 species here — Oak, Scots Pine, Birch, Olive, Acacia and Baobab among them — carry LOD0–LOD3 entities, so you can attach VisibilityRange to each level and let Bevy's HLOD switch distance bands with a dithered crossfade.

The faceted look comes from one normal per face and vertex colours (COLOR_0), so there are no textures, no UV work and almost no video memory. One StandardMaterial shared across models lets tree copies batch and instance automatically; LOD0 stays between a few hundred and a couple of thousand triangles. That leaves room for strategy, city builders, mobile, WebGL/WebGPU and VR. Build colliders from the collision mesh with Avian or bevy_rapier.

About the Low-poly style

Low-poly vegetation is the cheapest style to render and to ship.

Flat shading: one normal per face gives the crisp faceted look; no normal maps.
Colour lives in vertex colours (glTF COLOR_0), so there are no textures, no UV work and almost no video memory.
Leaves are solid geometry, not alpha cards: no alpha testing and no transparent overdraw, which matters on mobile GPUs.
One material can be shared by every model in the scene, so trees batch and instance easily.
Typical budgets range from a few hundred to a couple of thousand triangles at LOD0.

A good fit for mobile, WebGL/WebGPU, VR, strategy, city builders and stylised indie games. In the engine, use a material that multiplies by vertex colour.

Using it in Bevy

Bevy loads glTF/GLB through the AssetServer: asset_server.load(GltfAssetLabel::Scene(0).from_asset("tree.glb")), spawned with SceneRoot; individual meshes and materials are addressable by label. FBX and OBJ need third-party crates, so GLB is the format to use.

LOD: give the LOD0–LOD3 entities a VisibilityRange (start and end margins) for distance switching with dithered crossfade — Bevy's HLOD mechanism.
Leaves: glTF alphaMode MASK becomes AlphaMode::Mask(cutoff) on StandardMaterial, and double-sided materials disable back-face culling.
Entities that share a mesh and material are batched and instanced automatically, so many tree copies stay cheap.
Collision: Bevy has no built-in physics; build a collider from the collision mesh with Avian or bevy_rapier.