HDRP 2021.2 Grass Texture?

Hi!

We were using URP for our game because our game is a Survival game in a forest so we have to use lots of grass. Since Grass Textures came to HDRP we want to upgrade our project to HDRP but we couldn't find how to use Grass Textures!

 

Anyone?

 

Look at the error message in your screenshot

Compatible and improved detail rendering was said to come in a later HDRP version

 

On the roadmap site they say they released Grass Textures. Don't get me wrong but if there is no Grass Textures on HDRP's latest version currently i am using 2021.2.014a why it is in released tab. I just wanna use something like URP's grass texture. Because i think URP's Grass Texture performance is better than HDRP's detailed mesh grass but not sure tho.

 

The wording isn't exactly clear on this, but I think they mean they've added support for detail meshes with custom materials. Previously, the built-in detail shader was always forced on them. So this would still exclude detail textures (the auto-generated plane meshes).

So to use your grass billboard textures, you'd have to make a grass mesh, create materials for it, and create the prefabs. Which could just be a few crossed planes sharing the same UV space:

 

It works with Nature Renderer + Nature Shaders, but there isn't a built-in shader for it. Frankly you can't really use grass without Nature Renderer anyway. The built-in system blocks the main thread to generate the grass chunks.

 

wow

 

The fact that the built-in system is terrible is no excuse to have had no way to do grass in HDRP all this time. There should have been compatible shaders from the beginning.

 

i couldn't agree more

 

thanks for advice.

btw we just started using your terrain painter and it is amazing. Thanks for publishing that.

 

Thanks for clarification!

 

Could you backport grass to 2020LTS? It would extremely helpful to continue project rather than having it on 2021 alpha updates.

 

Yeah I tried to backport 2020 LTS but because of new versions of HDRP its so much work to get back. Also we are using so many features from 2021. Just hoping that they finish 2021 Alpha quickly or release more stable versions

 

2021 LTS lacks this feature as well.. Unity is really falling behind, it's sad.
Can't even get basic grass right, come on people!

 

It's supported grass meshes for a while now, just not grass textures which are unoptimized and look worse. If you need an example, there's a demo scene on the asset store:
Unity Terrain - HDRP Demo Scene | 3D Environments | Unity Asset Store

I wouldn't hold my breath on them supporting grass textures in the newer pipelines. It's just an unnecessary legacy feature.

 

Detail distance for grass meshes only seems to work up to 34 meters - is this a known limitation? If so, grass textures would be useful for adding grass further out.

2021.3.8f1

 

Still waiting.

 

Probably an issue in the shader you're using. The example grass shader for instance has a fade property on the material, which will also control visibility at a distance.
I have no issue rendering grass at whatever distance.

It's unlikely to happen. Grass textures were never a good thing to use. Check out the terrain demo to see how grass should work in HDRP:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/unity-terrain-hdrp-demo-scene-213198

 

Then why does the UI for it exist?