Pascal Nature plugin

The standalone, first-party example plugin for the Pascal editor. It contributes procedural plant nodes plus a separately exported host-side Nature panel, and exists to prove — and document — the minimal node-plugin surface every future plugin reuses.

Clone this repository as the starting point for your own Pascal plugin:

git clone https://github.com/pascalorg/plugin-trees.git
cd plugin-trees
bun install
bun run check-types

It is structurally identical to a third-party plugin: it peer-depends on @pascal-app/{core,viewer,editor} (plus react/three/@react-three/fiber/ zustand) and bundles @dgreenheck/ez-tree for the geometry. It imports nothing private.

Read Create a plugin for the public API walkthrough and host integration contract.

What it demonstrates

The contribution paths this package demonstrates:

1. Host-side panel extension — the standalone editor registers treesHostPanel separately from the core plugin manifest. presets-panel.tsx is a plain React component the host mounts behind an error boundary.
2. Right inspector for free — def.parametrics (parametrics.ts). The host renders the preset/height/seed controls + the Randomize action with zero tree-specific code.
3. Placement — def.tool/def.preview (tool.tsx, preview.tsx). The tool respects the active snapping mode (isGridSnapActive() + gridSnapStep) exactly like the built-in item/shelf tools.
4. Instanced rendering (the generic core in instanced.tsx, shared by both kinds) — instead of the per-node def.geometry path, plants render via two pieces:
   • def.system — a collective renderer mounted once that groups every node of the kind by its geometry variant and draws each variant as one InstancedMesh per sub-mesh. A forest of N is a handful of draw calls. Variant geometry is generated once and cached.
   • def.renderer — a featherweight per-node proxy: a stable invisible box collider (the raycast target) in an outer group, plus the real geometry (invisible, mounted only while hovered/selected) in an inner registered group. So the host's outline pass traces the true silhouette, picking stays on the box, and selection / outline / zone machinery works unchanged with no instanceId bookkeeping.

Three kinds

• trees:tree — ez-tree geometry (geometry.ts); species presets Oak / Pine / Aspen / Ash / Bush / Trellis × a Small/Medium/Large size (all of ez-tree's built-in presets), a Deciduous/Evergreen type, curated params (foliage density, trunk thickness, leafless), and leaf/branch colour tints — all folded into the variant key. Colours are edit-only (inspector), not on the placement brush.
• trees:flower — simple procedural geometry (flower-geometry.ts, merged per material); presets daisy / tulip / lavender, with a per-flower petal colour.
• trees:grass — procedural blade tufts (grass-geometry.ts); presets meadow / fescue / reed, with a per-tuft blade colour.

Flowers and grass are sibling kinds that reuse the exact same instanced core + placement helper (instanced.tsx / placement.tsx) and the shared procedural RNG (mulberry32 in geometry.ts) — the template for adding more plant kinds.

It also shows the communication triangle: presets-panel → plugin store (store.ts) → def.tool → SceneApi → scene → reactive useScene read-back (the "N planted" counter in the panel).

@dgreenheck/ez-tree ships its bark/leaf textures inlined as base64, so there are no assets to host. Placement seeds are drawn from a small bounded pool (TREE_SEED_POOL) so trees share variants — that sharing is what makes the instancing pay off; a unique inspector seed just renders as its own variant.

Manifest

import { treesPlugin } from '@pascal-app/plugin-trees'
// host:
setPluginDiscovery(async () => [treesPlugin])

treesPlugin exports three node kinds (trees:tree, trees:flower, trees:grass) for the core loadPlugin path. The editor app separately imports treesHostPanel to describe and surface the Nature rail entry; panels are not part of the v1 core plugin manifest. The panel declares pluginId and defaultInstalled: true, so Nature is listed in the Plugins sidebar and is enabled for new and legacy scenes unless a project explicitly uninstalls it.

Notes / known gaps

• package.json points main/exports at raw TypeScript (./src/index.ts). Pascal's example hosts transpile this source package directly. If you publish your plugin to npm for other hosts, ship built JS with .d.ts declarations or document the equivalent host transpilation requirement.
• createNode and the floorPlaced.footprint callback are typed against the host's hand-maintained AnyNode union, so the node is cast (as AnyNode / as TreeNode). The registry derives AnyNode post-migration.
• The placement tool re-derives level-local conversion from the public sceneRegistry because the built-in floor-placement helpers aren't part of the public @pascal-app/* surface yet — a candidate for a future @pascal-app/plugin-api re-export package.
• The instance matrices fold in the parent level's world transform; a building move while plants are static won't refresh until a node of that kind next changes.
• Heavy per-node tweaking of geometry params (or unique seeds) erodes instancing batching — but it degrades gracefully: such a node just becomes its own single-instance variant, never worse than the non-instanced path.

See Create a plugin for the full contract.

Credits

Tree geometry is powered by ez-tree, created by David Greenheck. Thank you for making the project available to the community under the MIT license.

License

MIT. @dgreenheck/ez-tree, used for tree geometry, is also MIT licensed.