A BillboardA textured 2D object that rotates as it, or the Camera, moves so that it always faces the Camera. More info
See in Glossary Asset is a collection of pre-rendered images of a more complicated MeshThe main graphics primitive of Unity. Meshes make up a large part of your 3D worlds. Unity supports triangulated or Quadrangulated polygon meshes. Nurbs, Nurms, Subdiv surfaces must be converted to polygons. More info
See in Glossary intended for use with the Billboard RendererRenders Billboard assets, either from a pre-made asset (exported from SpeedTree) or from a custom-created file that you create using a script at runtime or from a custom editor, for example. More info
See in Glossary, in order to render an object at some distance from a CameraA component which creates an image of a particular viewpoint in your scene. The output is either drawn to the screen or captured as a texture. More info
See in Glossary at a lower level of detailThe Level Of Detail (LOD) technique is an optimization that reduces the number of triangles that Unity has to render for a GameObject when its distance from the Camera increases. Each LOD level has either a Mesh with a Mesh Renderer component (Mesh LOD level) or a Billboard asset with a Billboard Renderer component (Billboard LOD level). Typically a single GameObject has three or four Mesh LOD levels and one optional Billboard LOD level to represent the same GameObject with decreasing detail in the geometry. More info
See in Glossary (LOD) to save on renderingThe process of drawing graphics to the screen (or to a render texture). By default, the main camera in Unity renders its view to the screen. More info
See in Glossary time.
The most common way to generate a Billboard Asset is to create files in SpeedTree Modeler, and then import them into Unity. It is also possible to create your own Billboard Assets from script. See the API reference for BillboardAsset for further details.