bevy_elements

Living environments for Bevy 0.20: a sun and moon on real ephemerides, the bright-star sky, a seeded climate that schedules hourly weather, a GPU wind field, volumetric clouds, rain and snow, lightning and thunder, fog, heightfield terrain with erosion and flooding, ground cover, rocks, dust, paths and trails — all in compute shaders. Everything runs behind one Environment system parameter, so gameplay asks the simulation what the ground, the water, the light and the weather are doing instead of guessing at it.

Add it

cargo add bevy_elements

use bevy::prelude::*;
use bevy_elements::*;

fn main() {
    App::new()
        .add_plugins((DefaultPlugins, ElementsPlugins))
        .insert_resource(WorldClock::new(CivilDate::new(2026, 6, 21)).at_hour(7.0))
        .insert_resource(Climate::temperate())
        .add_systems(Startup, setup)
        .run();
}

fn setup(mut commands: Commands) {
    // The environment follows and renders for the `ElementsCamera`.
    commands.spawn((
        Camera3d::default(),
        ElementsCamera::default(),
        Transform::from_xyz(0.0, 160.0, 0.0).looking_at(Vec3::new(100.0, 100.0, 0.0), Vec3::Y),
    ));
    // 2 km of rolling hills, centred on the origin.
    commands.spawn(Terrain::procedural(ProceduralTerrain::hills(42)));
}

Or run it first: cargo run --release --example quickstart.

What it gives you

• A living sky over any scene — sun, moon and 8 404 stars from real ephemerides, with exposure that keeps night dark: sky, weather and light.
• A seeded climate that schedules the weather — Clear through Blizzard, hourly, with seasons and a snow season a game sets by date: climate, seasons and weather.
• Rain, snow, fog and lightning that read from every camera — including orthographic and isometric views, through PrecipitationLook::readable(): precipitation.
• A terrain you generate, sculpt and save — procedural presets, a height map or flat ground, brushes on the live heightfield, snapshots to save and restore: terrain.
• Ground that wears — drifting snow and melt, wetness and puddles, blown sand, trodden paths, pressed footprints: ground cover.
• Water that answers — shallow-water hydrology with erosion, lakes and rivers, wakes from anything moving through: rivers, lakes and waves.
• A simulation gameplay can query — ground height and normal, water depth and velocity, snow depth, cloud shadow, the lumens a night lamp needs: gameplay queries.

Use it in the Cauldron

The Cauldron takes bevy_elements as the optional cargo feature bevy_elements (the volume snow feature builds on it as volume_snow), and its map environment panel edits this crate’s own serde types, written to <project>/family/bevy_elements.ron so the editor’s preview and the game read the same values:

• WorldClock, GeoLocation and Climate — the date, the clock, where the observer stands and the climate the scheduler draws from.
• WeatherPreset as forced_weather — Some(Rain) forces one preset and None releases the weather back to the climate’s own schedule, so a map can be authored under a storm and played under whatever the season brings.
• SnowSettings, WetnessSettings, RockSettings and DustSettings — how the snow settles, drifts and melts; how the ground wets and puddles; how many rocks lie on the ground; how the sand moves.
• SurfaceCover as volume_cover — a fixed snow and wetness a carved bevy_isomesh volume wears whatever the weather is, which is what a preview of a snow-capped cliff needs.

The editor also builds a map’s heightfield from ProceduralTerrain‘s presets (hills, mountains, dunes, plains) and puts bevy_elements’ SnowyField over a carved volume. Nothing outside those types is reachable from the editor yet: EnvironmentSetup and SurfaceSetup — the whole sky-and-ground setup as one saved, validated value that applies live — are the natural next panel, and the terrain’s TerrainSetup, SculptTerrain and RestoreTerrain would give it sculpting and undo.

Links

• Repository
• docs.rs
• crates.io
• CHANGELOG