Tree Editor - Universal Render Pipeline

Hi guys,

I'm using URP and noticed the trees made with Unity Tree Editor are not working, the material is pink. They require a unique material, for the bark, and for the leaves, and neither of those are available in URP. This is a noticeable problem.

This has been obvious and needs to be fixed. Are there developers within Unity who think the Tree Editor is falling out of their graces, who knows, but this is a game creation program not a collection of Unity features. Until there's a new Unity Tree Editor that is fully featured and works completely and is out of beta, the bark and leaf shader need a URP version. There needs to be a culture in Unity of fostering game development, not developing cool new features.

There are a lot of trees out there made with the Tree Editor, lots of trees. Please, Unity, just update 2 shaders. I know it may not easy or a popular new feature, but it's required to get a heck of a lot of assets to work again.

Thanks,
David

 

Trees made through

GameObject > 3D Object > Tree

are using a shader called "Nature/Tree Creator" and that one is no longer supported:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/speed-tree-on-lightweight-pipeline.536414/#post-4599229

Try the "Nature/SpeedTree" shaders instead.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@10.2/manual/speedtree.html

To be honest, Unity's Tree Editor is quite of an ancient relic... Unclear, if this will ever change. You may want to check out the 3rd party asset Mtree instead.
.

 

Really is a terrible for the Unity devs to stop supporting thousands of assets one day, posting it in a message somewhere in the middle of a forum post. Very bad practice. While they still sell those tree assets on the Asset Store and push everyone to URP.

Seems like there should be a way to send a support ticket that goes higher up, rather than to the very developers that decided thousands of assets aren't worth supporting, whether the Tree Editor continues or not. Especially when you have 'Nature Renderer' by Visual Design Cafe on the Asset Store that runs Unity vegetation whether it's URP, Standard, HDRP, and on the GPU, and they're not even affiliated with Unity. It costs $80 for a single and $850 for a studio license, so a bit much for many developers that just want their trees to run, but those Visual Cafe developers don't have access to what the Unity team does. You would think Unity could make 2 shaders as they continue to push everyone to URP, when an outside team can do so much more so quickly.

In short, a few Unity devs don't want to get off their butts to support these 2 basic shaders, and we should call them out, to the Unity management and rest of the Unity devs, too. You can call it whatever you want, that they are moving towards greater synergy with SpeedTree... but they could release the shaders in the Asset Store if they're afraid of putting too many shaders in the UI or if they don't want to promote the Tree Editor, and support the thousand of assets they're currently selling in the Asset Store while promoting URP. How do you message a higher up?

 

Below are pictures are of just one asset I bought that are now broke with URP.

Someone needs to let some of the management know what these devs are doing. Like, if the lead devs find out that they're intentionally not updating shaders and don't fix it, then it goes to execs, you don't just break basic functionality without a well communicated explanation or a temp fix. Some Unity devs intentionally let these all Tree Editor assets break in order to tell us that Tree Editor is old. And them taking a hard line stance also happens to allow themselves to do less work, so two birds with one stone?

Just update two shaders 'Nature/Tree Creator Bark' and 'Nature/Tree Creator Leaves', and put them somewhere on the Asset Store. You broke it, it's technically your job and your business to fix it.

Once again, these pictures from just one asset I bought from the Unity Asset Store:

 

Which asset is that?

On the last image, there is a bench on the bottom left that's pink, too. There are also some other vegetation pieces that are pink. It appears that the asset pack itself isn't made for the URP.

 

I can update the bench to URP/Unlit, that's not a problem, like many other materials, it converts to URP just fine.

The problem is that there's not way to convert all the trees, I've tried many ways. They take a specific shader that Unity has not updated. 'Nature/Tree Creator Bark' and 'Nature/Tree Creator Leaves'. Leaving those 2 broken breaks thousands of assets, assets they're currently selling on the asset store like the one I just bought, and assets that people have created. Sad to see so many purple assets throughout the Asset Store. Even if Tree Editor is old, place a replacement shader somewhere so people have a temp fix and not lose what they've already purchased.

Unity shouldn't have a culture of pushing new technology when it breaks games. Always have a solution in place first.

 

some self advertising here, sorry, but lux upr essentials bring the tree creator shaders to urp in case you need them urgently.

 

Thank you for the quick response! Will buy that today.

Hopefully Unity is monitoring this thread - these devs see the need. It's 2 essential shaders - why push everyone onto a new pipeline when there's no support for something like the terrain system?

 

i doubt that... you will have to make much more noise to get heard.
and i fully agree: urp should offer support for all "old" shader (liek grass and tree creator) and offer a simple way to override them with custom solutions.

 

Same problem. Unity in the last couple of years has been spitting out features non stop but has become notoriously flimsy in integration. Several years back Unity 4 / 5 days it was a way more robust engine.

 

URP/HDRP is such a mixed blessing, like yeah you get cool new features but at the cost of barely being able to use any packages. When you break so much existing stuff, it's not so much an upgrade at that point, but a fork. And most of these problems could be resolved just by saying to the user, "hey this shader is not usable, maybe you can try this other one instead?"

 

I'm late to the game but, at least I now know why the Tree Creator shader is not in URP/HDRP. It is not in Unity's interest now they own SpeedTree.

 

Kinda late to this thread, but is there any solution to this other than buying that 25 buck package larsbertram1 mentioned earlier in this thread? I'm a student trying to work on a unity project and I cannot find any trees that will work in unity 2020

 

There is another shader that you can use:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/the-vegetation-engine-159647

 

That's a bruh moment

 

I skipped over the part that it needed to be free.

 

This guy Ned has made a shader for URP, I haven't watched the whole video yet but I guess someone would

 

You can try to adjust replacing the material with the shader "Universal Render Pipeline"->"Nature"->"Speedtree7". In 80% of the cases it works fine with trees.

 

yeah but everytime I edit the tree it switches back to the legacy nature shaders. that may be a solution once you finalized the tree, but creating a tree with the internal tree tool is not really possible in URP.

 

I bought this very same asset, but it's not the only one I've bought where I basically just got screwed. Every time it happens, I'm reminded that UE5 doesnt have turds like this ruining my flow, leaving me to fester in frustration and costing me money I'm not making because of F'd up assets. If they won't fix it, they should at least take down the crap or give us our money back!

 

Uh, so the Tree Editor is about to be legacy now or what? This means one can't create trees in Unity with built in tools if using URP or HDRP.

 

I certainly hope not. Speed Tree is asking for a subscription model for indie projects. Any indie project. I may just buy a few trees on the asset store, because for a little arcade style game, this is not especially feasible. I mean there are other options out there and I don't even know if I'm going to make a profit on this one, I kind of doubt it.

I have found that switching the shader to URP>Lit seems to be stable and is not auto-replaced by the editor. That's what I'm going with for now. It seems to even work after a compile, but note that Unity trees attempts to replace it sometimes when it's selected. Honestly, I'm not one to huff and puff, but that's just bad design; I should at least know why a clearly compatible material is being opted out of.

Anyone have any luck just using the details for trees? I've gotten them to work well enough. I don't entirely understand the difference between the two, save that trees seem to allow for physics interactions.

 

You can try using the shaders and fix in this thread: https://forum.unity.com/threads/case-1227083-tree-nature-soft-occlusion-shader-in-urp.825825/

https://forum.unity.com/attachments/treecreator-zip.683934/
- Shaders go in asset folder
- Other file goes in the CGIncludes folder in the editor (remember to paste it in there every time you install a new editor)
NOTE: the editor folder is not in the game project, you need to find the editor in explorer and paste it in that way

 

I saw that SpeedTree was actually free in the past XD https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/vegetation/speedtree/free-speedtrees-package-29170

Yeah that works. But I hope they will put it in the latest Unity version if they haven't already. The latest LTS version however, sadly does not have it. Anyway, I'm leaving a reminder to myself and others here See below.

To upgrade the shaders on tree prefabs (after implementing the workaround which MichaelEGA had mentioned):
- Click on the Tree Root Node in the Tree component (this is necessary to edit the materials or you'll get a blank inspector page when you click on the nested materials).
- Upgrade the shaders of the bark and leaf materials that suddenly pop up at the bottom of the inspector.
"Hidden/Nature/Tree Creator Bark Optimized" should become "Nature/Tree Soft Occlusion Bark URP".
"Hidden/Nature/Tree Creator Leaves Optimized" should become "Nature/Tree Soft Occlusion Leaves URP".
- Remove the Tree component, because it has now become unusable. You'll get errors if you keep it and it will reset the shaders if you click on the Tree Root Node (making the model pink again).

EDIT: the lighting in URP is quite different, making the trees and everything else look nothing like the original.. I couldn't even get it to look as good as it did before o.o what have they done to the directional light or whatever is causing this... and I also used bloom from the standard assets (incompatible with URP) so now instead the one integrated in URP, with the same values as the one from the standard assets.. I also tried other values on both components but it just cannot look the same anymore :c disappointing

 

This is a ridiculous problem. The workarounds are time wasters. If Unity wants to promote URP AND continue selling the supposedly convertible SRP assets on the store, they need to add the tree nature soft occlusion shader as an option under URP material shaders in the editor.

It's crazy that this has been overlooked for so long. I would purchase an asset that has the proper trees for my project, but I don't trust creators I have never purchased from before to have dealt with this issue. BSP has included a URP installer with their tree packages, and I will continue to purchase from them, but I have a couple of other tree packages that are simply unusable in URP right now.

 

This. It is quite essential.