New: Nature Renderer 2021

Render vast amounts of detailed vegetation on your terrain.

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  1. Visual Design Cafe Support
  2. Nature Shaders
  3. Release Notes

1.0.X

2021.0.2

Fixed

  • Fixed shader errors in Unity 2021.3 LTS

1.0.12 / 2021.0.2

Fixed

  • Fixed issue that would cause interaction to break on OpenGL/WebGL.
  • Fixed issue that would cause color overlay textures to get flipped on OpenGL.

1.0.11 / 2021.0.2

Fixed

  • Fixed shader error "Non system-generated input signature parameter cannot appear after a system generated value".
  • Fixed shader error in Nature Collider shader when building in strict mode.
  • Fixed calculation of tangents for material surface in shaders. The incorrect tangents could cause some debug views to display incorrect data.

Changed

  • Updated documentation links and other links in inspector and menu

1.0.10

Fixed

  • Fixed shader compilation error when building project on Unity Cloud Build.
  • Fixed issue that could cause jittering in the wind animations when using floating origin.

Changed

  • The default Diffusion Profile is now automatically assigned for materials that do not have a diffusion profile.
  • Materials that use Nature Shaders are now automatically validated after importing a package into the project, to ensure that the properties are valid.
  • Nature Shaders now validates that the project does not contain any shaders with errors when building the project in strict mode.

1.0.9

New

  • Added Tiling and Offset settings for all textures in a material.
  • Floating Origin offset can now be set for shaders and materials to correctly handle color variations and wind when moving the world.

Fixed

  • Fixed shader compatibility issues in Unity 2021.2.
    • Added support for HDRP material debug views in Unity 2019, 2020, and 2021.
    • Added support for URP material debug views in Unity 2021.2.
    • Fixed Foward rendering for HDRP in Unity 2021.2.
  • Fixed "Unexpected Node Type" error that showed when importing Nature Shaders plugins.
  • Fixed API update warning in Unity 2021.2.

1.0.8

New

  • Full support for Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) in URP, for both Depth and DepthNormal settings.
  • Wind settings are now smoothly blended when changed to avoid jittering.

Fixed

  • Fixed issue that caused the thickness map to be ignored in translucency calculations.
  • Fixed shader error in Unity 2021.2 when using URP and "Low" lighting quality settings for a material.

Changed

  • Internal shader resources are no longer kept in memory when not necessary to reduce memory usage.

1.0.7

This release was only published as a custom build for a few users. The public release has been published as version 1.0.8.

1.0.6

Build 63:

New

  • Added conversion profile for Polyart assets.

Fixed

  • Fixed error "Destroying GameObjects immediately is not permitted" that was showing on startup.
  • Fixed conversion for some specific Nature Manufacture trees that did not have a correct UV layout. Nature Shaders now automatically fixes the UV layout for the trees during conversion.
  • Fixed import order when importing both Nature Assets and prefabs at the same time.

Build 62:

New

  • Support for motion vectors (preview).
  • Added ExtractMaterial method to the Nature Asset API.
  • The influence of shadows on translucency can now be tweaked in the material when using the Universal Render Pipeline.
  • Added "Exposure Weight" and "Multiply by Albedo" material properties in HDRP to more accurately tweak the emission.

Fixed

  • Fixed import order when importing multiple assets at the same time, such as when checking out a project from Git. This fixes an issue that could cause importing of Nature Assets to fail, resulting in empty objects.
  • Fixed shader compilation issue on Vulkan that would cause shader features to be disabled.
  • Fixed conversion of Nature Manufacture tree trunks for certain asset versions.
  • Fixed issue where primitive meshes would temporarily show up when rendering the first frame after startup.
  • Fixed issue that could cause flickering bright/white pixels in URP.
  • Specular Highlights now work correctly when using "Low" lighting quality for materials in URP.

Changed

  • Pushing down vegetation with interaction is now limited so that the vegetation can't be pushed down below the ground.
  • Mesh import settings are no longer read-only after converting a mesh using a Nature Asset to allow custom scripts to edit the mesh.
  • Reduced memory usage for internal shader resources.
  • Shader performance improvements.

1.0.5

New

  • Added conversion profile for Pure Nature asset.
  • Added 'Don't Convert' material type in Nature Asset import settings to skip the conversion for specific materials.
  • Added support for Secondary Maps to Tree Bark shader to allow blending of multiple textures. The blending is done using the blue vertex color channel. 

Fixed

  • Fixed "undeclared identifier 'Use_Macro_UNITY_MATRIX_M_instead_of_unity_ObjectToWorld'" error when using Vegetation Studio integration in HDRP.
  • Fixed issue where mesh type would not be resolved correctly when set to 'Auto', if the corresponding material type is set to 'Override'.
  • Fixed conversion of Nature Manufacture assets, especially for tree trunks. The tree trunks now correctly convert the textures and UVs, including multiple texture variations.
  • Fixed conversion for Speed Tree 8 models that use a single material for the entire tree.

Changed

  • Reduced number of shader variants to speed up compile time.
  • Improved detection of tree branches during Nature Asset import.
  • Renamed "Mesh Complexity" field in Nature Asset import settings to "Find Tree Branches" to more accurately represent the actual functionality of the field.
  • Vertex data for wind, interaction, and others is now projected from LOD0 onto lower LODs for more accurate and consistent transitions between LODs.
  • Meshes that have "Read/Write Enabled" on in the model import settings are now kept as readable after conversion.
  • Renamed "Tree Billboard" material type to "Billboard Asset" and added separate "Billboard Mesh" type.

1.0.4

Fixed

  • Fixed issue that would cause objects to render at an incorrect position in HDRP when using Nature Renderer with procedural instancing.
  • Fixed "Could not subscribe to render pipeline frame rendering" error in build when using built-in render pipeline. This was a harmless error but should not be shown.

1.0.3

New

  • Support for GPU Instancer.
  • Support for Vegetation Studio.
  • It is now possible to force forward rendering for specific shaders to enable translucency in combination with deferred rendering.
  • It is now possible to adjust the "popup speed" for interaction trails in the project quality settings (via code).
  • API to create and edit Nature Assets via code in the editor.

Fixed

  • Fixed conversion of Packed Map in Nature Manufacture conversion profile.
  • Fixed "implicit truncation of vector type" warning.
  • Fixed shadow clipping issue in HDRP.
  • Fixed shader errors in Unity 2020.3.
  • Fixed error where Unity could end up in an endless loop when importing assets, resulting in duplicate folders in the project view, or a project view that was not functional.
  • Fixed issue where color overlays would be sampled twice in opposite directions.

Changed

  • Interaction is now completely disabled in shaders if there are no Nature Colliders in the scene. This improves performance when interaction is enabled for shaders, but not actively used in the current scene.
  • Improved performance and optimizations in shaders.

Known Issues

  • Interaction has an incorrect offset in a WebGL build. Nature Colliders are floating slightly above the actual object, this can make it look like the interaction is not working.

1.0.2

Fixed

  • Fixed "Can't subscribe to Render Pipeline frame rendering" error when building projects that have IL2CPP enabled.
  • Fixed issue where grass and plants would be upside-down when used in a scene that does not have a Nature Collider in it.
  • Fixed conversion for Nature Manufacture trees in HDRP.
  • Fixed issue where the package manager would pop up every day.
  • Fixed issue where shaders would not be reloaded correctly after importing Nature Shaders.
  • Fixed removing of double-sided triangles during mesh conversion. The previous version could incorrectly remove triangles, resulting in holes in the mesh.
  • Fixed issue where colliders would not be registered for interaction or overlay if the collider was marked as a trigger.

Changed

  • Interaction now blends between Pivot and Vertex sample methods to give smoother interaction results.
  • Improved handling of random wind variation within a mesh. Each segment in a mesh now has a random phase offset to allow for variation in the mesh. "Combine Touching Segments" can be enabled in the Nature Asset import settings to ensure that touching segments have the same random offset. An example of a touching segment is a leaf that is touching the stem of a plant, these should have the same phase offset to ensure that the leaf does not float away from the stem.
  • Tweaked wind falloff for plants. More wind is now applied to the base of plants.
  • Added additional material names to the list of names to use when resolving "Automatic" material type.
  • Property names in Material Conversion settings of a Nature Asset now use readable names instead of direct property names. For example: "_TurbulenceStrength" now displays as "Turbulence Strength".
  • API for Nature Collider and Nature Overlay classes is now publicly accessible.
  • It is now possible to skip an update in the package manager.

Known Issues

  • Interaction has an incorrect offset in a WebGL build. Nature Colliders are floating slightly above the actual object, this can make it look like the interaction is not working.
  • Tree shadows are culled in HDRP when the sun is at a low angle and the tree itself is not in view. (Learn more)

1.0.1

Fixed

  • Fixed shader compile errors on PS4.
  • Fixed texture sampler in HDRP. The previous version would ignore texture import settings.
  • Fixed Post-Processing Profile for HDRP demo scene.

Changed

  • Added menu items with links to the documentation.

1.0.0

First official release.

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