bevy_trail

Overengineered GPU trail rendering plugin for Bevy. Renders trails efficiently by implicitly constructing triangle strips from a ring buffer, skipping explicit vertex and element buffers.

Usage

Add TrailPlugin, then attach a TrailEmitter to anything with a Transform. The emitter samples the entity's path and the trail follows it automatically — a trail is plain data, so this works even on an entity that renders its own mesh.

use bevy::prelude::*;
use bevy_trail::prelude::*;

fn main() {
    App::new()
        .add_plugins((DefaultPlugins, TrailPlugin))
        .add_systems(Startup, setup)
        .run();
}

fn setup(mut commands: Commands) {
    commands.spawn((
        Transform::default(),
        Trail::new(64).with_max_length(2.0).with_max_time(2.0),
        TrailStyle {
            start_color: LinearRgba::WHITE,
            end_color: LinearRgba::RED,
            start_width: 0.05,
            ..default()
        },
        TrailEmitter::default(),
    ));

    commands.spawn((
        Camera3d::default(),
        Transform::from_xyz(0.0, 0.0, 3.0).looking_at(Vec3::ZERO, Vec3::Y),
    ));
}

See the examples/ directory for more — emitter spacing, blend modes, pre-baked static trails, and a stress benchmark.

TODO

• Batch draw calls
• Shaded trails
• Handle jumps