Looking for advice on vegetation tool

I'm looking at two possible solutions -- Complete Terrain Shader and Vegetation Studio -- to help me make nicer looking terrains. Both look professional, provide great looking results, and are rated 5 stars by users, so I'm having a hard time deciding. CTS comes with vegetation assets, which is a definite plus, and it is less expensive than VS. VS on the other hand touts its ability to use instancing, and tree colliders can be generated dynamically only on those trees within a certain distance of the camera. It will, however, require me to purchase vegetation assets. Another plus for VS is that it is integrated into Easy Roads 3D, which means that new roads and rail road tracks will remove interfering terrain.

My terrain is not particularly sophisticated so I don't need something to help me build highly detailed procedural worlds. I'm hoping that someone with experience with either or both could point out some other pros or cons to help me decide. Thanks.

Ben

Edit: Should I be looking at GeNa as well, or maybe in lieu of CTS?

 

Hi,

If you think that Unity's vegetation system doesn't look nice - it's probably user error. What I'm saying is, try using more than the default grass before you spend $50 on something that might not work. Try looking up on YouTube some tutorials for making nicer grass, or for making your own grass shader. Trust me here. If you want to make your own, I'm also happy to help.

-Miggi124

 

@Miggi124 I appreciate the feedback. You're right, there are quite a few tutorials on YouTube that I could follow. Thanks.

 

Hi,

Anytime! Happy to help.

-Miggi124

 

How big is your terrain? In square km.

I am not a seasoned game developer but I do have enough experience to tell you all of the following as I've played with many different terrain setups.

Don't confuse CTS with VS. They are very different, one doesn't replace the other. But they work very well together.

Honestly, if you're only concern is the difference in $50, you'll spend way more time than necessary to achieve on your own what VS or CTS does. You can use CTS and VS together (as I do). I would also recommend Advanced Terrain Grass and Advanced Foliage Shaders. You can use these with VS as well.

VS is very powerful and saves a TON of time. If you have a large terrain, you will definitely want to look into instancing and VS.

Also, you can't be afraid to spend money on this stuff. If you want to get into game development, it's going to cost you. Be thankful that the developer community does what they do for the Asset Store. You can create AAA games in Unity on a reasonable time frame for just a few hundred dollars in Assets. That's amazing!

These are packages I use to create environments:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/advanced-terrain-grass-100014 - this is a nice shader for grass.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/advanced-foliage-shaders-v-5-68907
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vegetation/trees/trees-bundle-72855 - nice quality tree package
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vegetation/trees/mountain-trees-dynamic-nature-107004 - also a good tree package
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/fog-volume-3-81802
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/cts-complete-terrain-shader-91938 - only $25 right now.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/particles-effects/aquas-water-river-set-52103 - beautiful rivers and lakes (one thing I recommend if you get Aquas, don't use it's reflection scripts, use Post Processing Stack with Screen Space Reflections enabled - looks nearly the same and is WAY less taxing on the render.)
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/easyroads3d-pro-v3-469 - great road creator!
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/vegetation-studio-103389
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/post-processing-stack-83912 - Post Processing! FREE! I recommend this over any other post processor. A lot of packages you buy will already have profiles setup for it (which is cool). Don't get fooled by any SSAA assets. SSAA is for demos and small, contained scenes. SSAA is extremely taxing on large environments and simply won't work.

Also, I recommend getting a nice HDR skybox. Mundus has a few really good ones.
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/textures-materials/sky/mundus-skybox-pack-01-11750

Most, if not all, of these are on sale right now! Get them while they're cheap.

 

@LSUTiger85 Thank you for such an amazingly detailed response; I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I will check out all of the links! Awesome!

 

Massive Vegetation is a new alternative to Vegetation Studio. It includes many features that might be handy in your case.

Store: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vegetation/massive-vegetation-121801
Forum: https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...-in-seconds-and-draw-them-in-realtime.541280/

PS: I´m the author, so I´m not imparcial...