Material Editor

The material editor is used to edit the properties of a material. It contains the following sections to edit different parts of the material:

• Transparency
• Color Correction
• Surface
• Translucency
• Overlay
• Mesh
• Wind
• Interaction
• Perspective Correction
• Rendering

Transparency

Alpha Clipping

Enable to use alpha clipping for the material. Alpha clipping makes the parts of the material with a low alpha value (in the texture) transparent.

Threshold

Adjust the clip threshold for the material. Any alpha value in the texture below this value will be transparent, any value above the clip value is opaque.

Start Distance

The material will start fading out if it is this distance away from the camera.

Range

How long it takes for the material to completely fade out.

Let Nature Renderer control distance

Enable to let Nature Renderer control the fading distance. This ensures that the fading distance of the material is consistent with the culling distance of terrain details.

Color Correction

Use this section to change the color of the material. There are two different color correction methods to choose from: Tint and Hue/Saturation/Lightness (HSL).

Tint

This is the easiest method and has the best performance. However, it is not very accurate if you want to drastically change the color of the object. Tint should mainly be used for small color variations.

Tint

The color of the texture will be multiplied by the tint color.

Variation

A second tint color used to create color variety. The color is blended between Tint and Variation based on the object's world position.

Spread

The spread of the color variation.

Hue/Saturation/Lightness (HSL)

More advanced color correction can be achieved with Hue, Saturation, Lightness adjustments. This is great for completely changing the color of materials or for very accurate adjustments. The downside is that it has a higher impact on performance.

Hue

Change the hue of the material. The value will be blended between the min and max sliders.

Saturation

Change the saturation of the material. The value will be blended between the min and max sliders.

Lightness

Change the lightness of the material. The value will be blended between the min and max sliders.

Spread

The spread of the color variation

Surface

The surface section is used to set the surface properties and maps for the material.

Lighting Quality

The quality of the lighting for this material. "High" uses Physically Based Shading (similar to the "Standard" or "Lit" shader), while "Low" uses Blinn-Phong shading.

Specular Highlights

Disable to remove specular highlights and environment reflections from the material. This bypasses all specular calculations in the shader, and can be a performance improvement for materials that have close to no specular reflections.

Double Sided

Enable to render both the front- and back-side of triangles.

Normals

Set the behavior for the normals of double-sided triangles. "Same" applies the same normals to both sides, "Flip" will flip the normals for the backside.

Vertex Normal Strength

The influence of the vertex normals. A value of 1 will use the vertex normals, a value of 0 will ignore the vertex normals.

Albedo

A texture containing the base color for the material.

Normal

A texture containing the normal map for the material. Adjust the normal strength with the slider.

Glossiness, Metallic

A texture containing the smoothness/roughness and metallic values of the material. Use the slider to remap the smoothness/roughness. The channels use the same format as the mask map (see the table below).

Occlusion

A texture containing the occlusion of the material. Use the slider to remap the occlusion.

Packed Map

The mask map contains four grayscale textures, one in each of its color channels. Use the Smoothness and Occlusion properties to remap the values of the textures.

Color channel	Map
Red	Metallic
Green	Occlusion
Blue	Reserved for future use
Alpha	Smoothness

Emission

A texture containing the emission for the material. The texture color is multiplied by the Color and Intensity that are set for the emission. If no texture is set then only the Color is used.

For the Built-In Render Pipeline and the Universal Render Pipeline, the Intensity value should be around 1-10 in most cases. The High-Definition Render Pipeline uses a different unit for emission, and the Intensity value should be around 100,000 in most cases.

Translucency

Blend Mode

How the translucency will be blended with the material. "Add" simply adds the additional light, this is the default method and is recommended for realistic materials. "Overlay" applies an overlay blend mode and is recommended for stylized art styles.

Strength

The strength of the translucency. A higher value will increase the strength of the light, a value of 0 will disable the effect.

Scattering

How much the light will scatter when passing through the object. A higher value will show the effect over a wider range.

Distortion

How much the light will scatter based on the surface normal of the material.

Color

The color of the inside of the object. In most cases this can be left at white, unless the object has a specific material that modifies the light color.

Ambient Light

The influence of ambient light when calculating translucency.

Thickness

A map containing the thickness of the material. Black is a thickness of 0, which lets all light pass through. White is a thickness of 1, which does not allow any light to pass through.

Overlay

The overlay settings are used to determine if this material should be affected by the Nature Overlays in the scene.

Sample Color

Enable to load the color from Nature Overlays in the scene.

Sample Alpha

Enable to load the alpha from Nature Overlays in the scene. Note: Alpha clipping should be enabled as well for this material.

Mesh

The mesh settings are used to determine the shape and size of the mesh, which is used to calculate wind and interaction.

It is recommended to create a Nature Asset to automatically set up this section and the corresponding mesh data.

Baked Mesh Data

Enable if the data for the mesh is baked in the vertices of the mesh. Create a Nature Asset to bake the data for the mesh. Baked data is much more accurate and results in higher quality wind and interaction.

Height

The height of the object that this material is used for.

Radius

The radius of the object that this material is used for.

Wind

Wind Strength

Adjust the wind strength for this specific material. This value is multiplied by the wind strength in the scene.

Wind Turbulence

Adjust the wind turbulence for this specific material. The value is multiplied by the wind turbulence in the scene.

Wind Variation

Adds a variation to the wind strength based on the object's world position. A value of 0 will add no variation, a value of 1 will disable wind for some objects.

Trunk Bending

The amount of bending that will be applied to tree trunks. A value of 0 will prevent the trunk from bending and will only apply wind to the leaves and branches. Any value above 0 will bend the entire tree.

Trunk Bending (Base)

The amount of bending that will be applied to the base of the tree. Can be used if the tree has a low amount of triangles at the base of the tree to increase the bending effect.

Fade Start Distance

Wind animations will start fading out at this distance. This helps to reduce visual noise in the distance, and can save performance.

Fade Range

How long it takes for the wind to completely fade out.

Interaction

Sample Location

Select where to sample the interaction. "Vertex" checks for interaction for each vertex in the mesh. "Pivot" checks for interaction at the pivot of the object. Vertex is the most accurate and is recommended for grass, but it can cause distortion for meshes with a lot of vertices. Pivot is recommended for plants with a lot of vertices or large leaves.

Strength

Adjust how much the object should sway when an object passes through.

Time to settle

Adjusts for how long the object should continue swaying after an object passes through. The value is in seconds.

Push Down

Adjust how much the vegetation should be pushed down when another object is on top of this object.

Perspective Correction

Perspective Correction tilts the grass away from the camera when looked at from a top-down perspective. In this section you can adjust the strength of the effect.

Important: The mesh section needs to be set up as well for perspective correction to work.

Perspective Correction

The strength of the effect. A value of "0" will disable the effect, a value of "1" will fully tilt and stretch the grass. It is recommended to use a value of around "0.5" or lower, as higher values can cause stretching.

Rendering

Unity's default rendering settings for a material.