Advanced Terrain Grass

ATG is a grass rendering solution which was built to replace the detail rendering system of Unity’s terrain engine in order to get rid of all spikes on the CPU — caused by new grass patches coming into sight when your camera is moving.
Next to this initial purpose ATG offers significant improvements regarding lighting and wind animation.

Since version 1.2 ATG supports the Universal Rendering Pipeline which also supports touch bending or grass displacement. Support for the High Definition Rendering Pipeline is added starting with version 1.34 (touch bending is not supported).

Since version 1.07 ATG supports third party solutions such as Vegetation Studio and lets you use ATG's advanced lighting and bending features within these (BIRP only).

ATG is not an authoring tool: It simply takes the grass and details you have added to your terrains and takes over their rendering. That being said ATG is compatible with any 3rd party authoring solution that allows you to create grass density maps for built in terrains within the Unity editor like e.g. Terrain Composer, Map Magic (not at runtime), World Creator or Gaia. Runtime distributed grass currently is not supported.

The latest version needs Unity 2021.3 and above. But you still can grab a package for Unity 5.6.x and above.


Supported URP Versions
7.1.7, 7.2, 10.0+ , 11.0+ and 12.1+
Supported HDRP Versions
10.0, 12.1+

Documentation / Official Thread

Release Notes

## Delete the Advanced Terrain Grass folder before you import the new version! Version 1.4 # Enhanced calculation for the average position (height) of the cells. URP and HDRP only: # Updated wind script # Added simple support for Rendering Layers - no sophisticated GUI tho. # Enabling "Draw in edit mode" will no longer touch your main camera. # Fixed extents in Cellcontent URP only: # Converted shaders to Shader Graph. Version 1.36.1 # Some minor fixes added. Version 1.36 # Added HDRP 12.1 package. Version 1.35 # Added URP 12.1 package. # Fixed punctual lights not being rendered properly in forward if compute is disabled. Version 1.34 # Added HDRP preview package. Version 1.33 # Fixed "DepthNormal" shader # Updated URP 10 and 11 packages: - Support for Vegetation Studio Pro added. - Support for touch bending added to the foliage shader. - SSAO: Lets you adjust intensity. - Fixed URP 11 package. - Added new "Jitter" which most likely needs you to adjust the materials. Version 1.32 # Added "Scale Mode" to the grass shaders which lets you choose how details using the grass shader fade out (built in and URP 10 and URP 11 only) Version 1.31 # Shaders for URP 10 and 11 added. Version 1.3 # Improved HiZ buffer, fixed HiZ buffer in forward rendering. # Added support for Light Probe Proxy Volumes. # VR: Added support for compute. # VR Mock HDM: Added checkbox to force single pass instanced rendering. # Editor: The GrassManager Editor now handles invalid layer merge settings. # Editor: Safe guards added for missing materials. # Fixed material import settings of "Atg_BaseQuad". Now vertex colors should not get stripped anymore during the build process. # Grass Manager Script: Fixed custom random for IL2CPP. Improved randomness. # Grass Manager Script: Improved custom worker thread handling. Version 1.23 # URP: Shaders for URP 7.2. added. Version 1.22 # Grass Manager Script: Android bug in custom random function fixed. # URP Grass Shader: Touch bending added, culling option exposed, ambient reflection strength added. # URP Grass Shader: Support for main bending in alpha or blue added. This lets you use grass models authored for Lux LWRP Essentails, Vegetation Studio (Pro) and grass models from Naturemanufacturer. # Saved Terrain Data: [PreferBinarySerialization] added. Version 1.21 # Single Pass Instanced rendering fixed (URP). # Grass shader (URP): Shadow caster threshold added. Version 1.2 # Support for Universal Render Pipeline added. # Grass Manager Script: Grass will be rendered - even if all culling spheres/cells are visible. # Grass Manager Script: Minor memory improvements. Version 1.103 # Grass Dell Content Script: Added safe guard for v_matrices being nulled. Version 1.102 # Grass Manager Script: Fixed "LayerToMergeWith" not being setup in editor. Version 1.101 # Grass PrePass Shaders: Fix for Metal added. Version 1.1 # Grass Manager Script & Editor: Editor preview added. # Grass Manager Script & Editor: Safe guard for maxBucketDensity removed resulting in less memory consumption. # Grass Manager Script & Editor: "CullingGroup Distance Factor" added, which helps fixing popping in grass instances. # Grass Manager Script: Improved random generation. # Grass Manager Script: Improved height map sampling. # Grass shaders: Shadow caster and soft merge fixed. # Grass shaders: Added Depth Prepass variants - which may significantly improve performance. Please have a look at the docs to find out more. # Grass and folaige shaders: Added support for VegetationStudio Professional. # ConfigTerrainGrassShaders Script: Added which configures some proper fading values right when you load the project. # SetupATGCulling Script: Removed. # Grass Manager Editor: Improved preview thumbs. # BOTD Assets Demo added. # Documentation updated. Please read it carefully. Version 1.091 # Added support for cutscenes and switching between cameras / teleporting. # Grass Manager Script: Fixed issues with (soft) merging layers. # Grass Manager Editor: Fixed issues with Unity 2018.2. Version 1.09 # Added support for compute based frustum and HiZ culling. All saved terrain data has to be rebuild! # Added support for floating origin. # Grass Manager Script: Update changed to LateUpdate to support floating origins. # Grass Manager Script: Improved handling of low density factors. # Grass Manager Script: Fixed cell culling. # Foliage Shader: Bending function slightly changed, so you ight have to adjust your bending factors. # Folders refactored. A fresh import is highly recommended. Version 1.081 # Grass shaders: Fixed missing translucent lighting if "Enable specular lighting" is unchecked. # Foliage shader: Fixed needed pragma to bring backnormal mapping and full lighting # Grass Manager Script: Added "Freeze Size and Color" Version 1.08 # Support for Unity 2018.1 added # Grass Manager Script: Improved multi threading, which now does not produce any garbage anymore. # Grass Manager Script: Improved culling when using "Ignore Visibility": The script will now double check, if a cell is visible, thus giving you "faster" initialization of new cells if "Ignore Visibility" is checked. # Grass Manager Script: Improved normal sampling from the terrain. # Grass Manager Script: Dropped support for initializing single layers per cell – as it just does not make much sense anymore. # Grass Manager Script: Tightened grass culling distance calculation. # Grass Manager Script: Improved random generation. # Grass Manager Script: Fixed bug concerning releasing cells. # Grass Manager Script: Potential memory leaks fixed. # Grass Manager Editor: Fixed changing min/max sizes not updating the material. # Grass Manager Editor: Fixed script looking for the vertexLit shader using the old shader name. # Grass Manager Editor: Fixed script using wrong mesh name. Version 1.07 # Shaders: Support for Vegetation Studio added. # Shaders: Refactored per instance dry and healthy color so it gets respected by bending. # Shaders: File names changed. Version 1.06 # Grass Manager Script / Shaders: Need for extra normal buffer removed. # Shaders: Bending revisited. Improved vertex shader performance. # Grass Manager Inspector: Slightly improved GUI. # Grass Shaders: Adding variation to Vertex Color Red will give you variation in bending as well. Version 1.05 # Grass Manager Script: Improved Random for merged layers # Grass Manager Inspector: Slightly improved GUI Version 1.04 # Shaders: Forward lighting improved, grass lighting reworked to match Lux Plus. Version 1.03 # Grass Manager Script: Further performance improvements added to the worker thread. # Grass Manager Script: Invisible garbage created by worker thread reduced by approx. 50%. # Grass Manager Inspector: Debug.Logs removed to speed up the "safe terrain data" process. # Update notes: You have to recreate any "saved terrain data" file. Version 1.02 # Grass Manager Script: Almost all Mathf functions removed. Version 1.01 # Grass Manager Script: Terrain Position.y now is taken into account. # Grass Manager Script: Random generates the same results each time it is called. # Grass Manager Script: Shadows fixed for Unity >= 5.6.3. # Grass Manager Script: Sampling the terrain normal fixed for pretty large height maps (4097x4097px). # Grass Manager Script: Minor performance improvements. # Grass Manager Inspector: Assigning the default quad although a custom mesh is already assigned fixed. # Shaders: Specular Intensity controls ambient specular reflections as well. Version 1.0 # Initial release