# How best to create a forest?

**URL:** <https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/how-best-to-create-a-forest/62202>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Created:** [January 23, 2026, 12:56pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/how-best-to-create-a-forest/62202 "2026-01-23T12:56:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Andrew\_W](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/andrew_w/32/47463_2.png) [@Andrew\_W](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/Andrew_W)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 12:56pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/how-best-to-create-a-forest/62202/1 "2026-01-23T12:56:27Z")

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I made tree trunks in blender and then used thin instanced leaves. This worked ok for a few trees, but the scene slowed down when I added more than 3 or 4. How best to achieve a forest?

I’d prefer something truly 3d, so not the billboard approach.

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**Author:** ![CrashMaster](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/forum.babylonjs.com/crashmaster/32/23662_2.png) [@CrashMaster](https://forum.babylonjs.com/u/CrashMaster)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2026, 1:05pm UTC](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/how-best-to-create-a-forest/62202/2 "2026-01-23T13:05:49Z")

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Do you use thin instances for the trunks as well? How many polygons do you have so that it would slow down at 3/4 🤔 ?

Maybe you can share a playground with the tree model for testing ^^

I made a small forest scene here:

> [@Grass, butterflies and trees with instancing](https://forum.babylonjs.com/t/grass-butterflies-and-trees-with-instancing/45646):
>
> Hello everyone! After watching the last [video of Simon Dev on grass](https://youtu.be/bp7REZBV4P4), I was inspired to recreate and expand it using BabylonJS. So I had a lot of fun with instances and stuff and it came up nicely I think: You can try it out at [Hello BabylonJS !](https://barthpaleologue.github.io/AssetScattering/) (WASD or ZQSD to move around the character) The framerate holds at 60fps most of the time (not on the screenshot lol) on my Iris Xe integrated GPU. I think the trees my be to blame on that one I am not sure. All the source code is available [o…](https://github.com/BarthPaleologue/AssetScattering)

The trunks are quite low poly and the leaves are made using quads. That’s not as beautiful as having individual leaves but it’s performant.

If you want to use a high quality asset with individual leaves, you should read about octahedral impostors that are popular for this kind of task (here is a blog post I found very informative on the topic: [Post Page](https://shaderbits.com/blog/octahedral-impostors)).

Although I don’t know if someone implemented octahedral impostors in BabylonJS 🤷