How can I improve foliage performance without losing too much visual quality in UE5?

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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1

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a forest environment in Unreal Engine 5.3, and I’m having some trouble keeping the frame rate stable. The foliage looks great, but when I add a lot of trees and grass, the performance drops, especially when the camera moves quickly.

I’ve tried:

  • Enabling LODs for trees and bushes
  • Using Nanite on larger meshes
  • Adjusting cull distances for smaller plants

It helps, but not enough. Are there any techniques or settings you recommend for optimizing foliage-heavy scenes without making the environment look too empty or flat?

Any tips or examples would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

2

Replace transparency with masks in foliage materials. This removes overdraw which is a huge FPS hitter.

Clean up your meshes.

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image1858×870 108 KB

Use larger grass clumps (mesh) for your material grass type. This is your general “filler” grass.
Use Procedural volumes for intermediate fill.
Use Foliage paint tool for detail placement.

Increase LoD 0 screen size so it renders further out. Tailor 1-3 as needed.

Use Nanite only on meshes with 500K+ poly’s. At least until Nanite Foliage is released.