Unity Digest: Working on Vegetation

1. The Vegetation Engine

A collection of highly optimized vegetation shaders and tools designed to customize any vegetation asset from the Unity Asset Store, SpeedTree, Quixel Megascans, etc. or custom vegetation. The engine allows you to add high-quality wind motion, dynamic-wind power, vegetation interaction with unlimited objects or characters, dynamic seasons, global overlay (snow, sand, dust), global wetness, tinting, etc. 

Here are some technical features of the engine: 

• one-click scene setup, prefab conversion, and revert
• automatic mesh, material, and texture conversion
• prefab convertor expert mode and convertor presets
• easy prefab motion setup
• Regular Prefabs, Meshes and Materials output after conversion
• Prefabs can be placed as Scene Game Objects or Terrain Trees

2. Stylized Grass Shader

The shader will help achieve stunning visuals and tactile grass for the Universal Render Pipeline (7.2.0+).

Key features are:

• Lush wind animations
• Per object and per-vertex color variation, breaks up the visual repetition
• Bending and flattening through trails, meshes or particle effects
• Sunlight translucency rendering
• Color blending with terrain surface (supports tiled setups and mesh terrains)
• Includes several grass models and textures designed for mass placement.
• Compatible with all URP rendering features
• Physically-based or simple shading mode
• Vegetation Studio (Pro) integration
• Nature Renderer support

3. Apple Species Pack

The pack includes 6 models (.SPM) in hero and desktop resolutions. You will find 12 drop-in-ready exports in the spring and fall seasons: Apple Field and Forest (Desktop), Apple Field and Forest (Hero), Apple Sapling, and Apple Seedling.

SPM files go with:

• Unlimited seasonal variations
• Randomization
• A full set of PBR leaf and bark textures (2k leaf textures, 4k leaf cluster textures, and 4k bark textures)
• A tuned wind animation defined LOD settings and multiple cluster (.SPM) files of the branches for editing.

Please note that this pack isn’t compatible with SpeedTree 7. 

Unity 2019.2.0 or later is required.

4. Trees Bundle

The pack Includes (.fbx meshes with LODs):

• 6 birches;
• 4 maples;
• 8 oaks;
• 3 pines;
• 5 spruces;
• 4 Crimean pines;
• 3 cherry plums;
• 3 cypresses;
• 3 linden trees;
• 3 sakura trees;
• 2 Stankevich pines.
• 3 rose bushes;
• 2 grape plants;
• 5 simple bushes.

You can find the Trees pack for default Unity pipeline here.

Note: this pack doesn't support wind.

5. Low Poly Vegetation Pack

With this pack, you will get a huge variety of different stylized plants, grass, bushes, and other plants ready to use in your game levels. Just drag and drop prefabs into your scene and achieve beautiful results in no time. Assets are PC, Mobile, and VR friendly. 

The pack goes with standard, LWRP, HDRP, URP supported render pipelines.

The assets are:

• 43 Bushes
• 43 Flower Bushes
• 10 Dead Bushes
• 66 Flowers
• 68 Mushrooms
• 67 Other Plants
• 12 Reeds
• 27 Cacti
• 52 Mesh Grass
• 28 Grass Planes
• 16 3D Grass

Read more in-depth about this package on the website.