In the U3, beta3, it appears that the tree renderer is broken. I’m not sure if this is a bug, or a problem with the trees I am using (from the “old” terrain assets package).
You can see in the screenshot, that the billboards work just fine. When I get closer and the engine switches to mesh trees, the lose part or all of their foliage. These are actually the same trees you see there.
These trees use the “Nature/Soft Occlusion (Leaves/Bark)” shaders. As I said, they’re from the terrain assets package that is on the Unity website.
What I am seeing is the foliage (leaves) are full in editor mode but shrinks (small and sparse)
in game mode no matter how far the camera is from them.
Unless I just have my camera distance larger than the distance I ever get from them.
The effect is much better in beta 5, but not completely gone. At the billboard-to-mesh switch distance, leaves still look way too small, the mesh tree does not nearly look the same as the billboard. At closer distances, it gets better.
Trees created with the tree creator are much better and suffer less from this effect then trees from, say, the old terrain assets package.
Screenshot to illustrate - these are all the same tree prototypes.
it seems to depend a lot on the tree, though. Here’s a shot with a different tree, which even in beta 5 appears completely deforested when it switches. Left and right are the same prototypes, the bad-looking one is just a little closer…
As I said, the tree creator trees are quite a bit better. Not perfect, but better.
Unfortunately, there aren’t yet any available anywhere for download. Plus, of course, tree models bought somewhere should work, right?
But your posting gave me an idea. After some experimenting, I’m now 99% sure that it’s a problem with the Nature/Soft Occlusion Leave shader. Playing with the Base Alpha cutoff value there changes the effect visibly.
It appears that the billboards are calculated as if Base Alpha cutoff is 0, while the mesh trees appear at max distance with the value at 1, and then fade towards whatever you put into the shader.
I’m not saying that’s what is happening, but if you play with that value, that is exactly what it looks like.
The tree shaders are still being worked on, both for Tree Creator trees and legacy Nature Soft-Occlusion shaders. The old tree shaders are somewhat broken at the moment. We’re going to get them looking at least as good as they used to. The new ones we’re still improving at the moment.
As much as tree models work with SpeedTree if you bought them somewhere: if they were targeted at this usage, then yes.
Otherwise, they might better be used as detail objects if their setup does not conform to the requirements, or you will have to rework the setup.
This or something similar to it would make sense for a smooth fade from billboard to mesh foliage though. although it shouldn’t be that glitchy.
I think various of the old shaders that had to do with alpha are broken or not fully compatible.
But its beta and at the time the engine is still in motion so I don’t expect shaders to work all fine especially not legacy shaders …
…which is why I’m reporting what I find. Unfortunately, the bug reporting system is sub-optimal, for example it is - as far as I know - add additional information to a bug reported by someone else.
I have noticed the shadows are not working with the trees created with the new tree creator when using them as painted in the terrain (not like common game objects). I think it is a problem with the shader used.
I get exactly this “billboard-switches-to-3D-empty-tree-trunk-only” problem on a project I made in 2.6.1 and imported to Unity3 final release.
The tree was made in modo and imported as FBX and worked fine before.
I’m seeing the same effect as shown in the image in the first post when opening a project made in 2.6 with Unity 3. Are we not able to use existing trees in Unity 3?
I am still having the same problems with trees ( and grass ). Any new news on this? Is there some way to have Unity 3.0 render trees and grass like it did in 2.6.1. Maybe a setting I am missing or something? Thanks.
