Tree Creator assets, what can we do with them?

Unity Engine
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Hey folks, based on what I read here :

  • Tree Creator is a relic so no future changes are expected to come.
  • Tree Creator enforce the shader to be “Nature/Leaves” or “Nature/Barks” at Geometry material level
  • Tree Creator will only use “Nature/Bark Optimized” or “Nature/Leaves Optimized” in its final output, and you cannot modify these materials.

Does it mean:

  • There are really no way to modify a Tree Creator asset without everything showing up as pink under URP or HDRP, right?
  • There are really no way to auto-convert a Tree Creator into a mtree or other more flexible assets, right?
  • And that’s why many vegetation asset on Asset Store explicitly say “SRP is not supported”: because they are based on Tree Creator and there isn’t a pathway to fix them, right?

So here is my situation:

  • I own some of these Tree Creator assets, I like their looks;
  • I also own mtree, lux urp essentials plugins;
  • I have also downloaded “book of the dead” demo and even the very recent foliage demo here from unity tech artist.
  • But I have NOT found a way to convert existing Tree Creator assets, my best bet looks like this:

Use FBX Export to make them a static mesh, and apply new shader manually.

Does anyone have a better suggestion than this? Do I really have to abandon these perfectly ok trees?

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PS: I don’t know who to ping here, but this feels like a big unsolved problem and a huge waste of time and assets.

I know Unity is moving towards SpeedTree, but unless Unity is magically converting Tree Creator assets into SpeedTree assets, I see no way but to bake Tree Creator assets into static mesh and start making new trees with alternative methods. There is no pathway for Tree Creator anymore.

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Looks like I have to go with this, wish me luck…

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mmm the problem with “book of the dead” is that they let it die (ironic) but there are people making changes to that asset, look for “book of the dead” here in the forum and go to the latest page, maybe you can find help there.

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book of the dead was using tree creator? I thought they used GrowFx.

https://blog.unity.com/technology/book-of-the-dead-photogrammetry-assets-trees-vfx

Note my link to the asset Unity recently released, which was using SpeedTree.

https://blog.unity.com/games/experience-the-new-unity-terrain-demo-scenes-for-hdrp-and-urp

I tested out a few options for the legacy Tree Editor, so far I would go with baking them into static meshes.