The Vegetation Engine

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○ Unity Awards 2020

The Vegetation Engine won second place at Unity Awards 2020 • Best Development Tool! Huge thanks to anyone for their support and feedback!

○ The Vegetation Engine

The Vegetation Engine is a set of highly customizable vegetation and props shaders and powerful tools designed to unify any asset from the Unity Asset Store, Megascans, Speedtree, Tree Creator, and more, or custom models made by your team.

Enable high-quality wind motion, interaction, local wind, seasons, wetness, subsurface scattering, gradient and noise tint, perspective correction, camera distance fade, glancing angle fade, crossfade, size fade, top projection, and detail blending, and more, for all vegetation assets and props with Standard, Universal, or HD Render Pipeline!

○ The Converter

The Vegetation Engine comes with a one-click conversion workflow for 3rd party vegetation assets. Once converted, the assets are fully compatible with all features provided by the asset and will work in all render pipelines! The converter uses text-based presets with an easy-to-use but comprehensive API.

○ The Shaders

The Vegetation Engine includes highly customizable shaders compatible with all render pipelines. With feature parity between pipelines, switching to another render pipeline can be done at any time. With over 50 parameters, you can enable or disable features with the Amplify Base Function function!

○ The Elements

The Vegetation Engine comes with a comprehensive set of modular elements, used for motion and interaction with unlimited characters, motion flow, local wind, dynamic seasons, global overlay (snow, sand, dust), wetness, tinting, size control, and leaves amount with minimal performance impact!

○ The Layers

The Vegetation Engine comes with a new layers system for both the elements and the materials, so you can customize how each material is affected globally. Add separate season colorization for trees and grass or different interaction elements per material with an easy and intuitive layer system.

○ The Community

With constant updates and improvements, all BOXOPHOBIC assets are trusted by tens of thousands of game developers. Check out the above screenshots taken by our community, showcasing asset store and custom-made vegetation using the Vegetation Engine in various projects and render pipelines.

○ Compatibility

The Vegetation Engine supports the following Render Pipelines:

✓ Standard Render Pipeline 2021.3+

✓ Universal Render Pipeline 2021.3+ / 2022.3+ / 2023.3+

✓ HD Render Pipeline 2021.3+ / 2022.3+ / 2023.3+

The Vegetation Engine supports the following modules:

✓ The Vegetation Engine • Amplify Impostors Module

✓ The Vegetation Engine • Mobile Shaders Module

✓ The Vegetation Engine • Terrain Shaders Module

✓ The Vegetation Engine • Terrain Blanket Module

✓ The Vegetation Engine • Terrain Details Module

✓ The Vegetation Engine • Terrain Elements Module

The Vegetation Engine supports the following 3rd party tools:

✓ Amplify Shader Editor - Full shader editing support

✓ Vegetation Studio Pro - Instanced Indirect support

✓ Nature Renderer - Procedural Instancing support

✓ GPU Instancer - Instanced Indirect support

✓ Mega World Quadro Renderer - Procedural Instancing support

✓ Vladislav Tsurikov Instant Renderer - Procedural Instancing support

✓ DE Environment - Conversion for DE Environment

✓ Magio - Interactive Effect Engine support (by Arctibyte OAVA)

✓ Ignis - Interactive Fire System support (by Arctibyte OAVA)

✓ Game Creator - Actions for TVE control (by RVR)

✓ Enviro - Enviro to TVE control (by CatGamesStudio)

The Vegetation Engine supports vegetation created with the following tools:

✓ Speedtree - Profesional vegetation creation tool

✓ Broccoli Tree Creator - Powerful tree creation tool for the Unity

✓ Unity Tree Creator - Built-in Unity tree creation tool

✓ CTI - Advanced vegetation importer tool

✓ TreeIt - Free vegetation creation tool

✓ MTree (procedural setup) - Powerful tree creation tool for the Unity

The Vegetation Engine supports the following 3rd party vegetation assets:

✓ Any Asset - User setup or Automatic setup

✓ Quixel Megascans - All vegetation assets

✓ Polyart Studio - Dreamscape Collection | NEW

✓ Daelonik Artworks - All vegetation assets and props | NEW

✓ Synty Studios - Biomes Nature Packs | NEW

✓ Synty Studios - POLYGON - Nature Pack

✓ SICS Games - Toon Fantasy Nature

✓ SeedMesh Studio - All vegetation assets

✓ Triforge - Real Landscapes Valley Forest

✓ Raygeas - Stylized Forest / Azure/ Suntail Village

✓ Aquarius Max - Stylized Trees and Foliage

✓ Nature Manufacture - All vegetation assets

✓ Manufactura K4 - Alien Forest / Coniferous Forest / All Tree Creator Assets

✓ Staggart Creations - Stylized Grass / Fantasy Adventure

✓ Visual Design Cafe - All vegetation assets

✓ Angry Mesh - All vegetation assets

✓ ALP8310 - Tree Creator assets only (Forest Environment not supported)

✓ BK - Pure Nature Environment

✓ Artkovski - The Illustrated Nature

✓ Nicrom - Nature Hybrid Pack

✓ Procedural Worlds - Gaia Pro Vegetation

✓ TerraWorld - All vegetation assets

✓ Goatogrammetry - All vegetation assets

✓ BSP - Animated vegetation packages

✓ IL.ranch - All vegetation assets

✓ Forst - All CTI vegetation assets

✓ Baldinoboy - All CTI and Tree Creator vegetation assets

✓ Tobyfredson - Rocky Hills CTI vegetation assets

✓ Infinity PBR - Book Of The Dead vegetation

✓ Digifanter - Big Nature Pack

✓ Mikael Gustafsson - All vegetation assets

○ Limitations

🞫 TVE is not a placement tool, it is a vegetation unification/detailing tool

🞫 TVE is designed to work with instancing, static batching support is limited

🞫 TVE is expensive for mobile, using the mobile module is recommended

🞫 Shader Model 4.5+ capable devices are required (Desktop / High-End Mobile)

🞫 Scalable Ambient Obscurance is not supported in Forward Rendering

🞫 Billboard Renderers from Speedtree7, Tree Creators, and CTI are not supported. Speedtree7 billboard faces are not supported!

🞫 Billboard shaders for VSP and GPUI will not work with the TVE features!

🞫 HDRP ray tracing and path tracing are not fully supported!

🞫 Only the latest LTS Unity versions are officially supported!

○ Disclaimers

⚑ The Vegetation Engine will not do a 1:1 conversion for the assets. Even if in most cases the converted prefabs will look similar to the original asset, depending on the original shaders, lighting can change, colors can change, various features could not work anymore and the wind animation will definitely be different. After conversion, material tweaks will be required!

⚑ This is not a vegetation spawner tool, but it can be used together with your favorite tools supporting instanced indirect such as Vegetation Studio, Nature Renderer, GPU Instancer, Mega World, or other placement tools like Microverse, Gaia, Map Magic, Terra World, etc...

⚑ The Vegetation Engine shaders can be heavy on lower-end hardware because many features are enabled by default. You can create your own shader versions using the Amplify Base Function, by disabling the features you don't need!

Read more about features and shaders below!

Release Notes

○ Upgrading

⚑ Using version control or backing up the project is always recommended before updating to a new version. Always delete the Vegetation Engine and Modules folders before importing the new versions and check the changes to see how they can impact your project! Recompile all the custom TVE shaders to get the latest improvements!

○ Requirements

✓ Standard Render Pipeline: Unity 2021.3.0+

✓ Universal Render Pipeline: Unity 2021.3.37+ / Unity 2022.3.25+ / Unity 6000.0.b16+

✓ HD Render Pipeline: Unity 2021.3.37+ / Unity 2022.3.25+ / Unity 6000.0.b16+

✓ Amplify Shader Editor: 1.9.3.3+ (for custom shader compilation only)

○ Version 12.6.0

Improvements

✓ Shaders: Updated and recompiled the shaders based on ASE 1.9.3.3 improvements

○ Version 12.5.0

Features

✓ Core: Added label on the Prefab script showing the preset used on conversion

✓ Core: Added a basic tool for bug reporting

✓ Core: Added warning in the converter tool when scene prefabs have overrides

✓ Core: Added Clamp Negative Values converter action, useful to cut branch motion for roots

✓ Terrain: Added support for metallic

✓ Terrain: Added support for Global Alpha

✓ Blanket: Added support for metallic terrain blending

✓ Presets: Added include to get Shader Graph render settings

✓ Shaders: Upgraded all shaders based on Amplify 1.9.3

Fixes

✓ Core: Fixed converter not keeping mesh settings on user changes

✓ Core: Fixed Assets Manager wrongly renaming some assets

✓ Core: Fixed incorrect pipeline detection on installation in some cases

✓ Terrain: Fixed layer 8-11 normal map not working properly

○ Version 12.4.0

Changes

✓ Elements: Added faster elements sorting algorithm implemented by Morphy

✓ Core: Locked properties are no longer copied when using the Copy Settings From Object option

✓ Terrain: Added Alpha Clipping instead of holes to be consistent with the other shaders

✓ Blanket: Added option to blend the terrain normals with the mesh

Fixes

✓ Elements: Fixed Vertex Size elements not working with Shader Graph imported in BIRP

✓ Mobile: Fixed mobile shader pivots not working properly

✓ Terrain: Fixed terrain rendering with HDRP decals and render queue

✓ Terrain: Fixed terrain vertex position when instanced in BIRP

○ Version 12.3.0

Changes

✓ Terrain: The terrain package is no longer experimental but the script and shader have changed! All shader features are now moved from the script to the shader for easier usage. Unfortunately, all settings set on the script will reset and you will need to set them again on the terrain material!

✓ Shaders: Moved all BIRP shaders to a vertex/frag template to be able to add keywords without increasing the compilation time and to improve performance. If you are using custom-compiled BIRP shaders, use the BOXOPHOBIC>The Vegetation Engine> Lit amplify template instead!

✓ Shaders: Added better internal shader keyword naming, custom shaders will need to be recompiled to get the latest changes!

Features

✓ Core: Added a new Material Upgrader window to be used after all modules are installed. The old way of upgrading materials via the Hub was not capturing some materials using module shaders when the modules are not installed due to missing shaders. The new window will be opened automatically when material upgrading is needed!

✓ Blanket: Added full terrain blending support when using the Terrain Shader Module

✓ Blanket: Improved the terrain to blanket normals calculation for seamless blending

✓ Terrain: Unified the terrain shaders workflow, all features are now set on the material instead of compiling per-terrain shaders

✓ Terrain: Added support for using mesh terrains, the control textures and layers can be assigned on the TVE Terrain script

✓ Shaders: Added Show Active Keywords on the material to see the keywords in use

Fixes

✓ Elements: Fixed Interaction Advanced elements removing grass with fast movement

✓ Elements: Fixed inconsistent terrain height conform on Vulkan and GLES

○ Version 12.2.0

Changes

✓ Core: The converter no longer adds Labels to the converted assets, but they can be searched by name/type

Features

✓ Core: Added support to change the saving format on conversion. You can now specify where the assets are saved, what naming convention they use, and how they are saved on collect. The option is available in the Converter > Advanced Settings > OutputData or via presets! Check the documentation for more details!

✓ Core: Added support for Collections. The collections are ready-made converted assets with tweaked materials, tweaked per-branch variation for higher-quality wind and they include prefabs with impostor LODs. More details coming soon!

✓ Core: Added support for JasonBooth’s Foliage Renderer instanced indirect renderer in the Shader Manager

✓ Core: Added support for VladislavTsurikov’s Renderer Stack instanced indirect renderer in the Shader Manager

Fixes

✓ Shaders: Fixed wrong keywords added to the shaders for decals and SSR in HDRP

○ Version 12.1.0

Changes

✓ Terrain: Redesigned the terrain script to be more extensible in the future. The settings will reset to default after updating and you will need to update the terrain shader using the Update Shader Buton!

Features

✓ Core: The Collect Collected Data now copies the backup prefab as well to be able to reconvert collected prefabs if needed

✓Terrain: Added support for per-layer Triplanar, Stochastic, and Triplanar Stochastic texture sampling (updating terrain shader is required)

✓Terrain: Added debug info showing how many texture samples are used for the terrain shader

✓Terrain: The new materials and shaders are now organized in a folder called Terrains Data similar to how converted assets are saved

✓Shaders: Added support to invert the vertex occlusion when it is used as mask for overlay

Fixes

✓ Blanket: Fixed global color not working properly when the terrain blending is enabled

○ Version 12.0.2

Fixes

✓ Core: Fixed the terrain shader generation not working in some cases

✓ Shaders: Fixed emissive keyword missing from the core shaders

○ Version 12.0.1

Fixes

✓ Core: Fixed the Shader Manager not detecting the Blanket shaders

○ Version 12.0.0

Changes

✓ Terrain: Redesigned the terrain script to generate a new shader per terrain to be able to only enable features you need without adding tons of keywords to the shaders. This new feature will allow enabling features like procedural texturing and triplanar per layer instead of on the entire terrain, greatly reducing the rendering cost! Check the Terrain Shaders: General Setup in the doc for more details!

✓ Pipelines: Renamed the pipelines to match the unity version instead of the pipeline version for easier installation

✓ Shaders: Inverted the Overlay Tilling to match terrain UV scale mode when the overlay textures are enabled

Features

✓ Core: Made the Manager more robust by only allowing one manager to be enabled at any time and all elements are automatically assigned to the active manager. If an active manager is now present, all other managers will be disabled

✓ Core: Added auto-detection for the current project render pipeline

✓ Core: Updated Flora Instanced Indirect include path

✓ Core: Added support to change the layer names for each element category individually (check the Core>Resources>Internal Layers file)

✓ Core: Imroved the shader banner to show a yellow subtitle for the core shaders and a light-green subtitle for user-generated shaders

✓ Core: Added support to duplicate the core shaders to be editable with Amplify Shader Editor when using the Shader Manager tool

✓ Core: Added multiple visual improvements and fixes to the Shader Manager tool

✓ Lite: Added support for Global Overlay to the free Lite shaders to allow publishers to create snowy sceneries

✓ Lite: Added Octahedron Impostor shaders to the free Lite package to allow publishers to create impostor LODs

✓ Pipelines: Added support for HDRP/URP 17+ with Unity 2023.3+ (Preview)

✓ Elements: Added debug info showing if the elements are inside the global/render volumes

✓ Shaders: Added support for 2 Main Colors to be used to color branches and leaves separately

✓ Shaders: Added Emissive layer to the Impostor shaders (the texture baking is disabled by default)