The Vegetation Engine | Terrain Shaders Module
The Vegetation Engine is a set of high-quality shaders and tools designed to unify 3rd party vegetation under the same system. Enable high-quality wind motion, interaction, seasons, wetness, subsurface, height-based blending, etc. for all vegetation assets with Standard, Universal, or HD Render Pipeline!
The latest version of the Vegetation Engine is required for the module to work!
○ Overview
The Terrain Shaders Module is an advanced terrain shader solution with up to 16 layers supported, height-based blending, and per-layer planar, triplanar, and stochastic mapping and it has integration with the Vegetation Engine global seasons, overlay, wetness, emissive, and height offset for snow accumulation or tracks. It offers 2 texture packing modes to reduce the texture amount and optimize the rendering.
The Terrain Shaders Module allows you to override the layer textures and parameters per terrain or to use Custom Render Textures or Render Textures with animated effects such as molten lava or animated sand wind which is not possible by default with the terrain system!
○ Compatibility
The Terrain Shaders Module supports the following Render Pipelines:
✓ Standard Render Pipeline 2021.3+
✓ Universal Render Pipeline 2021.3+ / 2022.3+ / 2023.3+
✓ HD Render Pipeline 2021.3+ / 2022.3+ / 2023.3+
The Terrain Shaders Module has integration with the following 3rd party tools:
✓ Amplify Shader Editor - Full shader editing support
The Terrain Shaders Module supports the following add-ons:
✓ The Vegetation Engine • Terrain Blanket Module (Terrain Blending)
✓ The Vegetation Engine • Terrain Elements Module
○ Features
✓ The Vegetation Engine systems support: Seasons, Overlay, Wetness, Height Offset
✓ The Vegetation Engine elements support: Colors, Overlay, Wetness, Height Offset
✓ Up to 16 terrain layers supported in one pass
✓ Per-layer Planar, Triplanar, and Stochastic mapping | NEW
✓ Up to 16 terrain layers supported in one pass
✓ Height-based blending
✓ Global Emissive support
✓ Works with mesh terrains
✓ Amplify Shader Editor support
✓ Demo scenes included
○ Limitations
🞫 The height offset feature is only visual and it will not modify the actual terrain collision!
🞫 Shader Model 4.5+ capable devices are required (Desktop / High-End Mobile)
🞫 HDRP ray tracing and path tracing are not fully supported!
🞫 Only the latest LTS Unity versions are officially supported!
○ Disclaimers
⚑ The Terrain Shader uses the Mask Alpha as Smoothness and the Albedo Alpha as a Foliage/Emissive mask. Texture packing might be needed if Smoothness is added to the Albedo texture!
⚑ The Terrain Shader can also work with mesh terrains if the control maps for the layer weights are provided. You can bake the control maps from the terrain using my free tool called Terrain Data Baker or Unity's Terrain Tools from the package manager! GPU Instancing must be disabled on the material.