Better Leaves 9.0 - 1.20+

by Motschen on Dec 26, 2024

Motschen's Better Leaves: Lite

A more optimized version of my Better Leaves pack aiming to be the best-performing of all, while still looking spectacular.

In which ways is this more optimized than the regular version?

Glad you asked. First of all, the leaf models use way less elements in comparison, as the round textures are generated in advance instead of being faked as round during rendering.

Does it also outperform packs made by other authors?

Yes, probably. Most other packs use two seperate textures: one for the regular part of the leaves and one for the bushy part. This is generally not a problem, since Minecraft bakes textures into an atlas (a big texture containing all the smaller block textures), to avoid constant texture rebinds. However, using two textures in a model can still cause some overhead, as the game has to locate the coordinates of both on the atlas. Additionally, the atlas size might have to be increased to fit two textures per leaf block – also resulting in performance loss.

This pack mitigates this by just replacing the regular leaf texture with one round version, which contains the default texture in the middle.

Are there any downsides?

As with everything good, there are a couple caviats, but don't worry, as I've designed the pack with them in mind.

The first is the fact that – compared to the regular pack – there is no compatibility with texturepacks that feature custom leaf textures. You can however easily build your own version of the pack with custom textures by using the script included in this repo (see more below). This should also work with higher-res textures, though your mileage may wary.
You can even customize the template mask by editing input/mask.png in an image editor of your choice.

The second downside is that certain mods or resourcepacks might use the leaf texture to render something else, resulting in rendering issues.
Make sure to report such cases to me, though not every bug of this nature can get fixed.