Nature Renderer: Better terrain detail rendering ✅ PBR ✅ Custom Shaders ✅ Shadows ✅ Wind ✅ SRP

Nature Renderer
2020: Download on the Asset Store ›
2021: Download on our website ›

Render vast amounts of vegetation without slowing down your game.
Nature Renderer improves the quality of your vegetation rendering by replacing Unity's default terrain details system. Everything works with your existing data: use the same grass, vegetation, and trees and keep your existing terrains. We just level-up your renderer.

Supports all platforms and all render pipelines
The correct assets are automatically imported into your project. More details and an exact list of supported versions are at the end of the description.

One-click install
Just add the Nature Renderer component to your terrain and everything works instantly.

Website • QuickStart • Documentation • Twitter

FEATURES
―――

Physically Based Rendering
Get accurate lighting and more detail on your grass, vegetation, and terrain details. You can use full PBR shaders on your detail objects. Such as the Standard Shader or any other.

LOD
Use Level-of-Detail on your terrain detail objects to reduce complexity in the distance and increase performance.

Shadows
Enable shadows for grass, plants, and other terrain details.

Wind
Better wind for your vegetation. The included wind shaders provide accurate and lifelike wind for grass, plants, and trees.

Custom Shaders
Use any custom shader for your terrain details to achieve special effects.

Align to terrain
Align your grass and objects to the terrain surface. No more floating grass or objects clipping through the terrain.

Familiar Tools
Use Unity's default terrain, detail, and tree editing tools. No need to change your workflow.

Live Editing
Results show both in edit-mode and at runtime. And all changes to your terrain are updated immediately.

Additional features

• Fully multi-threaded for best performance.
• Fade out vegetation in the distance.
• Efficient culling of vegetation.
• Works with multiple terrains.
• Minimal GC Allocations and stable consistent performance.
• Works with multiple cameras.
• Floating Origin support for large worlds.
• All data is compressed for optimal memory usage.
• Easily disable rendering when a player is indoors or can't see the terrain.

Comes with Nature Shaders Essentials
Includes a collection of essential vegetation shaders that enable Wind Animations, Translucency, Color Variations, and more.


Now Available:
2020: Download on the Asset Store ›
2021: Download on our website ›

 

Reserved

 

Reserved

 

Looks very interesting. How much of a frame rate increase have you seen using this?

 

Is there HDRP support?

 

Does it work on mobile?

 

It depends a bit on the settings you use, but as an example, the scene from the video at the top gives the following results:

• Nature Renderer: 60-70 FPS. (With full PBR shaders and high-resolution shadows for all grass.)
• Unity: 40 FPS. (With a basic shader, no shadows, and a reduced density. Unity has a vertex limit so it couldn't handle the density).

Edit: Some additional specs:
Resolution: 2560 x 1080
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
Using 2x MSAA

 

Yes. HDRP is supported straight out of the box.

 

Yes. You just have to make sure that the minimum system requirements for GPU Instancing are met.
GPU Instancing is available on the following platforms and APIs:

• DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 on Windows
• OpenGL Core 4.1+/ES3.0+ on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android
• Metal on macOS and iOS
• Vulkan on Windows, Linux and Android
• PlayStation 4 and Xbox One
• WebGL (requires WebGL 2.0 API)

 

Sounds good. I am assuming VR isn't be an issue?

 

just subscribed. Really excited about HDRP support!

 

VR shouldn't be an issue, although I haven't had the chance to directly test it on a VR device yet.

 

Could we get more realistic scenes rather than stylized? I would love to see how it comes out.

Thanks!

 

What about seasons? snow / wetness

 

I don't have any specific demo scene for a realistic style, but I just put together a few assets from the Book of the Dead in a new HDRP project so you can get an impression of the results. You should be able to get much better results if you put a bit more effort into setting up the lighting/render settings/materials.

Also, I noticed a few issues with the HDRP version that I am fixing now. So full HDRP support might be pushed back a few days after launch with version 1.1

 

Not supported by default. But you can add it quite easily because Nature Renderer supports the use of custom shaders. So you can download any existing snow/wetness solution and use it with Nature Renderer.

 

I hope it can work together with Map magic 2, that would be great great render with map magic placement

 

I just gave it a try with the evaluation version of Map Magic and looks like it works without any problems. Just add the Nature Renderer component to your terrain and disable Map Magic's terrain detail rendering and everything works.

 

That is great to hear!

 

I am happy to announce that Nature Renderer is now available on the Asset Store!
Download for free on the Asset Store ›

Please let me know if you have any feedback or questions after downloading Nature Renderer!
(And a new update with full HDRP support and LOD is coming soon)

 

Great news, one question is Universal render pipeline support also on the roadmap?

thanks

 

Yes, it is. Nature Renderer itself should already work, but I still have to port the wind shaders.

 

Fantastic, and all for free ! thank you for making this

 

I guess I was the first to leave a review. This is exactly what I would have expected from unity to do... AGES AGO!!!.... thanks for doing this. I would have gladly paid for that, just so you know

 

He can trade ya for your characters

 

Just waiting for HDRP support

 

Its already supported

 

Thank you! I am glad to hear that you like Nature Renderer If you want to help support us please consider sharing on social media and/or checking out Open World Nature Kit. That way we can keep Nature Renderer free.

 

Full support is coming with version 1.1 (although you can mostly get it working with the current version)

Looks like it will be ready by the end of the week. Plus maybe a few days until the update is live on the store. (Let me know if you want to give it a try earlier and I can send you a preview version)

 

I've just tried the version on Asset Store and it seems like it is giving dll errors...I am assuming this will be resolved when 1.1 is released so I will keep an eye out for this asset until then.

Also, it seems like there is a paid version, or a more complete version that includes this asset, can I safely assume that this will also support HDRP?

Either way, thanks for the great asset, the description alone is promising!

 

Yes, the errors should be resolved. I have just uploaded version 1.1 with support for HDRP, LWRP, and URP. It should be available within the next few days.

And yes, the paid asset also supports HDRP. (It is a collection of models and shaders to build your world, so it is a separate asset and not a variation of Nature Renderer. Just to clarify) I'll be uploading LWRP and URP versions for that one as well in the next few days.

 

I would like to set the detail distance to a higher value than 150, can you enable this?

 

A test scene

 

I'll see if I can change it. 150 was Unity's limit but it shouldn't be an issue to change it I think.

Looking good!

 

Version 1.1.0 has just been published with full support for the High-Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP), and Universal Render Pipeline (URP). As well as full Level-of-Detail (LOD) support for terrain details. You can download the latest version from the Asset Store or from the menu in Unity:
Window > Nature Renderer > Check for Updates

 

Great news!

 

I got one error, I can click it away, but I'm not sure what it is for
I'm on a Mac, with unity 2018.4.11f1 default render pipeline

Spoiler

 

Thank you for reporting this error. It looks like it is a small error that occurs when changing the prefab of a detail object that does not have LOD. It is safe to ignore for now and I'll upload a patch soon. You should be able to make the error go away by re-opening the scene.

 

I'm using unity tree creator trees.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-Tree.html

Could be related to this?

 

Version 1.1.1 has just been published. You can update by going to:
Window > Nature Renderer > Check for Updates

The new version will be live on the Asset Store within a few days (probably after the weekend). It is recommended to update through the built-in updater as it will download the correct assets for your render pipeline.

Changes:

• Density now matches with Unity’s default detail density.
• You can now use the density slider in the terrain settings to increase/decrease detail density.
• Fixed a NullReferenceException when changing the prefab of a detail object. (@Lars-Steenhoff this should fix your error)
• Fixed an exception when GPU Instancing is not enabled for a material.
• Increased maximum detail rendering distance to 350. (@Lars-Steenhoff as requested )
• Fixed issue where painting details in HDRP would disappear if the target strength was less than 1.

 

Hello,

you once made a shader version of the grass shader that I could use for my grass tiles which were in a texture Atlas.
Thanks again for that, it was a great help :
Is it already included in the asset no, or as I believe it is not, could you also update it and in my personal opinion it should be in the asset, too?

Thanks a lot! Great asset

 

It does not include the exact same shader, but you should be able to get a similar effect by choosing the 'Grass' shader and then setting the 'Wind Control' property to '(Vertex) Position'.

 

I'm trying it out on iOS , but it seems like its not showing the light on the grass. Can you confirm a check on iOS?

Spoiler: error Xcode

GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1

Initializing Metal device caps: Apple A10 GPU

Initialize engine version: 2018.4.11f1 (7098af2f11ea)

2019-10-27 00:05:53.028149+0200 fly2[358:13038] Unbalanced calls to begin/end appearance transitions for <SplashScreenController: 0x109b42ed0>.

WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Hidden/Nature/Terrain/Utilities' - All passes removed

ERROR: Shader Shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable)WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Hidden/Nature/Terrain/Utilities' - Setting to default shader.

UnloadTime: 0.618375 ms

InControl (version 1.7.4 build 9343)

InControl.InControlManager:OnEnable()


(Filename: ./Runtime/Export/Debug.bindings.h Line: 45)


ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.

Parameter name: shader

at VisualDesignCafe.Rendering.Nature.MeshGenerator.CreateGrassMaterial (UnityEngine.Texture texture) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0

at VisualDesignCafe.Rendering.Nature.DetailPrototypeCache.CopyFrom (UnityEngine.DetailPrototype detail, System.Single fieldOfView, System.Boolean& flushEverything) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0

at VisualDesignCafe.Rendering.Nature.TerrainDataCache.CopyDetailPrototypeFrom (UnityEngine.TerrainData data, System.Int32 layer) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0

at VisualDesignCafe.Rendering.Nature.TerrainDataCache.CopyFrom (UnityEngine.Terrain terrain, System.Boolean& flushEverything) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0

at VisualDesignCafe.Rendering.Nature.TerrainCells.RebuildTerrainData (System.Boolean& flushEverything) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0

at VisualDesignCafe.Rendering.Nature.NatureRenderer.Initialize () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0

at VisualDesignCafe.Rendering.Nature.NatureRenderer.Awake () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0


(Filename: currently not available on il2cpp Line: -1)

 

Can you share a screenshot of the issue and let me know the following details:
- Which render pipeline are you using?
- Which shader are you using for the grass?
- Which device are you using?

I just doubled checked and everything looks fine on iOS here. Tested with the demo scene that comes with Nature Renderer on an iPhone X.

 

- Default renderpipeline ( metal )
- Did not change the shader, just opened the demo scene from nature renderer
- iPhone 7 plus
- Unity 2018.4.11.f1 on Mac

Do I need to change the shader somehow ?

Spoiler: Error

WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Hidden/Nature/Terrain/Utilities' - All passes removed

ERROR: Shader Shader is not supported on this GPU (none of subshaders/fallbacks are suitable)WARNING: Shader Unsupported: 'Hidden/Nature/Terrain/Utilities' - Setting to default shader.

 

Feature request: touch bending for grass and foliage

 

For map magic integration, It only works on the first generated terrain and the script needs to be copied to newly runtime generated terrains. I don't yet know how to do this.

Normally you can add a script to the mapmagic game object and it will copy to the new terrains, but because nature renderer automatically adds a terrain too, this is not working.

 

I am not familiar enough with MapMagic to have an immediate answer for you here, but I'll look into it.
Nature Renderer requires a Terrain component to be on the Game Object because it needs the terrain data to render your vegetation. Does Map Magic spawn new terrains at runtime, and do these not have Terrain components?

 

Yes it spawns new terrains at runtime, and the only thing needed it that those spawned terrains also use nature renderer. yes they have terrain components.

just the main mapmagic script does not have a terrian component, but its children have.

 

I'll see if I can modify Nature Renderer to not require a Terrain component. In the meantime, can you try adding a Terrain component and a Nature Renderer component to the MapMagic Game Object and then disabling the Terrain component? Maybe having a dummy (disabled) terrain component will get around this issue.