Tree Creator HDRP

Hello,
I have imported and enabled HDRP in 2018:
- terrain is invisible (https://forum.unity.com/threads/terrain-invisible-in-hdrp.528886/ i understand - currently there is no support);
- also all trees and materials (with Upgrade Project Materials to HDRP materials) - pink.

There is no support Nature/Tree Creator materials for HDRP? In future? What to do?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XgwEEH-fXbUA6Ij3kKO9n0Y2tHqdUG2n/view

UPD: LWRP too - all pink.

 

This is expected for a preview. HDRP isn't due for release until 2018.3 and will only work with the HD Lit shaders for now.

This is not a beta issue so I have moved the thread to graphics experimental previews.

 

Thank you!

 

Wait, have they said it could work on regular shaders too at some point? I thought it was more of intentional limitation to allow only shaders designed for it.

 

Hello,
2018.3 released.
Any news?

 

It's an intentional limitation, sorry I referred to the terrain itself and vegetation rendering. We got the terrain shader for HDRP in time for 2018.3 - for vegetation rendering, this will take longer - I have no idea when, sorry. I had expected them to ship at least a simple set but it wasn't the case, just terrain only.

For Speedtree etc, or 3rd party, we're at the mercy of waiting up until 2019.3 - official HDRP launch period - before we can actually effectively complain. Hopefully movement will happen long before.

 

Thank you!

 

Heh, I don't even remember writing that but yeah, it's almost one year old message

 

Only caught it due to reply

 

Any expectation when SRP will be out of preview?

 

The LWRP Will be out of Preview in 2019.1 so The Scriptable Render Pipeline should be out of preview Soon Don't Know For A Fact When it will fully release though, but the HDRP probably wont come out till 2019.3 so we might be waiting awhile.

 

I had a go with the github branch they are working on SpeedTree support in, and unlike the last time I tried, it looks pretty close to being ready for an initial release to me (though my testing of it has hardly been thorough at this stage).

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ScriptableRenderPipeline/tree/HDRP/SpeedTree

That branch is based on HDRP 6.x so 2019.2 is the Unity version required, but they may well backport it to 5.x (2019.1) for all I know.

 

Time for hippo to upgrade to 2019.2 then.

 

LWRP is released; what about 'Tree Creator' shaders for it?
UPD: ~2019.2 https://forum.unity.com/threads/speed-tree-on-lightweight-pipeline.536414/

 

Still wondering when the Tree Creator shaders will be updated for LWRP

 

I haven't a clue if they ever will be. Anything vegetation on Unity's side seems to be on the back burner.

 

Sounds like a bit of an incentive to make people use the speedtree plugin instead I guess if that was updated for LWRP

 

I take it the Tree Creator Nature shaders are just as broken for HDRP as it it for LWRP eh?

 

Last I heard is that they are being made redundant, on newer versions of LWRP/HDRP I think the Speedtree shaders have been set up for SRP, but it is only available on newer versions of unity like 2019.2 beta and 2019.3 alpha

 

I have hdrp project on 2019.3, any tip to make it work?
I want animation on terrian custom trees( those in standard assets), can i animate them in 3d and play it through animator on terrian?

 

I can change the materials to HDRP Lit, but if i rotate a tree and press undo, they glitch back to purple. what gives?
is there at least any way to export the meshes to blender and reimport them as a regular mesh file, or anything like that?

 

We are on 2020 now and still pink trees for HDRP. Do the fine folks at Unity know this is an issue?

 

yeah really. any word on tree creator not glitching off the lit shader when it recomputes the trees, for whatever reason.

 

After ten years, the standard pipeline evolved with the help of Unity community members
Now we have to wait another ten years for HD Pipeline to evolve with the help of the Unity community .

 

Tree Creator is abandoned. And has been since support for SpeedTree was added to the engine back in Unity 5. It received a shader update in 2016, and that was the last Unity has ever touched it. There was never any intention of making it compatible with the SRPs, because it was abandoned long before they even existed. Even in Built-in, it's been breaking down in different ways ever since.

The shader has crap lighting that only looks good in bright daytime scenes unless you edit the shader (to kind of fix it, remove "noforwardadd" in the shader directives). You cannot manually move limbs on a trunk, it spits NREs. And at some point, Unity was no longer able to apply a random rotation to the trees when painted on a terrain. They disabled the feature shortly after, instead of fixing it. As time goes on, it continues to get worse.

Unity officially announced it's abandonment sometime in late 2019 - early 2020, in this Issue. They were supposed to open source it ages ago, but they are intent on letting it rot, instead.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But this is just how Unity has operated for the last 4-5 years.

 

Bad news
tree creator was amazing
Unity adds new technologies(HDRP,URP) instead of solving its simple problems which have no efficiency on the final result (hdrp urp)
There is currently no Realtime GI solution in HDRP !!! No ray traced SSR like UE4 (stochastic ssr in built-in) and al other nextgen games

 

If you're doing "next gen" stuff, you're probably way better off working with SpeedTree anyway (which I'm not sure the SRPs support yet, either). Or using some of the fantastic nature sets floating around the store that have much nicer shaders.

As for me, Tree Creator was a free, simple solution for making basic low-poly trees that worked with the terrain optimizations and wind features. SpeedTree, and the other solutions on the store, are overkill for my project. They force me into high-poly workflows that are not compatible with my game's art style.

To this day, Unity Tree Creator remains one of the few procedural tree modeling solutions that lets you put leaves on the trunk. Such a simple distinguishment allows me to dramatically lower the poly count, that would otherwise not even be seen.

 

One of the best features of Tree Creator was its syncing with terrain system
Also work within the unity itself
In my opinion, the quality of the tree depends on its textures:
The texture can make your tree photorealistic. The tree creator just make the geometry

 

Not really. Speed tree was next gen when Oblivion was a new game, now it’s outdated tech and barely anyone uses it.

 

"Next gen" was in quotes, and compared to Unity Tree Creator, it might as well be next gen. It also stills sees a lot of use in AAA games. Some really large companies probably rolled their own solution to avoid licensing fees.

Unity has shaders specifically made for SpeedTree imports. I believe it supports all the terrain features. At least for built-in.

I found that Tree Creator gets clunky and performs poorly with more complex trees. I haven't used ST, but I reckon it's better for more detailed trees. I know that I was able to build more complex trees faster in MTree.

Not entirely. Newer tools have a lot of nicer features for modeling that produce better results. I mean, if you just love Tree Creator, I ain't gonna judge. But it sounds like you've just never used any other tree modeler.

I think Tree Creator is great for quick simple trees for beginners, or those with simpler art styles like mine. I think it's worth keeping it around for that alone. But if you're doing higher res trees, I'd probably recommend an upgrade. There's a couple on the store if you really want to build inside Unity. Their shaders are much nicer as well. They also support the SRPs.

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/mtree-tree-creation-132433
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/broccoli-tree-creator-121853

 

https://portal.productboard.com/uni...fects/tabs/18-high-definition-render-pipeline - as far as I can see support for SpeedTree 8 was added to 2021.2 alpha.

 

I was browsing around Tree Creator vs Tree Editor. Tree Creator as I understand it was a separate package. But Tree Editor is still in Unity 2022.2 documentation (along with Speed Tree). The problem seems to be the only shaders shipped are for the built-in pipeline. So I was trying to create Shader Graph versions of a shader that could be used with Tree Editor (so could create shaders for HDRP and URP). There are a bunch of properties with specific names you need to add (which is fine), but there is also the line about you have to specified a dependency on an optimized shader. I don't know how to do this with Shader Graph.



For example, the Nature/TreeCreator* shaders have such a line in them https://github.com/TwoTailsGames/Un...Nature/TreeCreator/TreeCreatorBark.shader#L47 - but I don't know what "optimized" shaders means! I was going to try and just have this point back to the current shader and see if it works, but I got stuck on defining the dependency with shader graph.

 

I wrote up a blog to collect my notes. It probably has errors, but noting on this thread in case useful. And if you spot errors, please let me know! https://extra-ordinary.tv/2023/03/15/unity-tree-editor-and-shader-graphs/

 

Still waiting on this github repo.