★ New in Nature Renderer 2021

Tree Rendering
GPU-based render pipeline
GPU Frustum Culling
Render manually placed objects
Custom GPU profiler window
Support for Motion Vectors
Support for Depth Prepass in URP
Per-Object render settings
Per-Camera render settings
Deferred rendering in URP
Support for light layers in URP and HDRP
New realistic demo scene

2021.2.1

Fixed

Fixed frustum culling and shadow culling for trees. Previously, the culling could be incorrect when trees use a large scale or an offset in the prefab.
Fixed exception when selecting a Nature Instance that does not have any prefab assigned.

Changed

Tweaked default streaming budget for better performance out of the box.
Detail Resolution Per Patch value in the terrain settings is now automatically set to an optimized value of 64. This behavior can be disabled in the Advanced settings of the Nature Renderer component.
Improved internal memory management, caching, and performance when registering new prefabs.

2021.2.0

New

It is now possible to manually place game objects and render them with Nature Renderer. This is useful for placing vegetation on rocks, cliffs, buildings, and other uneven surfaces that are not supported by the terrain system.

Fixed

Default settings are now correctly applied when an object has a NatureRendererObjectSettings component with disabled settings.
Fixed shadow culling. Large objects are no longer culled if their shadows are in view of the camera.
Fixed colors in the Nature Renderer Profiler window when using a playmode tint at runtime in the editor.
Fixed shader patcher compatibility with the latest Nature Manufacture shaders.
Fixed exception "Not allowed to access Renderer.material on prefab object. Use Renderer.sharedMaterial instead".
Frustum culling now works correctly when changing the camera aspect ratio at runtime.

Changed

Added "LOD Bias" setting to NatureRendererCameraSettings component to override the LOD Bias for specific cameras.
Added setting to Global Settings to disable forcibly loading cells that are nearby the camera. Vegetation that is close to the camera is forced to be streamed-in and loaded completely to avoid vegetation popping. This can cause performance issues with fast moving cameras. It is now possible to disable this behaviour for use cases where smooth performance is more important than having all vegetation loaded.
Added button to remove registered vegetation from the terrain via the Nature Renderer component. Previously, this could only be done via the terrain component itself.
Nature Renderer Profiler window now shows a message if there are no active cameras.
Added setting to enable/disable Nature Renderer for only trees or detail objects.
Added "Patch All" button to Nature Renderer inspector to automatically patch all unsupported shaders.
Added setting to NatureRendererCameraSettings component to disable Motion Vectors for a specific camera.
Added "Convert All" button to Nature Renderer inspector to automatically convert all grass textures to prefabs.
Improved demo scene and added an animation showcasing some of Nature Renderer's features.
Nature Renderer inspector now shows a warning dialog when the vegetation was modified but not saved when closing the inspector.
Converting grass textures to prefabs now also copies over the color settings from the grass textures to the new materials.

2021.1.6

New

It is now possible to change the default render settings of Nature Renderer by adding a game object to the scene with a NatureRendererDefaultSettings component.

Fixed

Fixed flickering when using VR single pass instanced rendering.
Fixed issue where a detail object would be added to the terrain instead of a tree when trying to add a tree via the vegetation list in the Nature Renderer component. This would happen if the terrain did not have any existing detail objects.
Nature Renderer now immediately refreshes the internal render data when changing the size or resolution of the terrain. Previously the internal data would not get refreshed until the scene was saved, resulting in incorrect rendering in the editor for unsaved scenes.
Fixed ExitGUI Exception when selecting a prefab from the vegetation list UI in the Nature Renderer component.
NatureRendererCameraSettings component that is created at runtime is now correctly loaded by Nature Renderer.
Shader patcher no longer places shader code inside unused preprocessor blocks (#if #endif). Previously, the Nature Renderer code could end up in an unused preprocessor block for some shaders, resulting in a broken shader.
Trees that are placed outside the bounds of the terrain are now ignored. A warning message is printed to the console in the editor for trees that are outside of the bounds. Previously, this would result in an internal exception.

Changed

Added "Assign" option to the dialog that shows when trying to patch a shader but a patched shader already exists. The Assign option will assign the existing patched shader to the material instead of creating a new shader.
It is now possible to add or edit the NatureRendererObjectSettings component from the vegetation UI in the Nature Renderer component.
Objects in the Nature Renderer Profiler can now be collapsed/expanded and are collapsed by default.
Cameras that are not active are now faded in the Nature Renderer Profiler.

2021.1.5

Fixed

Fixed issue where shader patcher would try to patch the same shader multiple times if a prefab contains multiple materials with the same shader.
Fixed NullReferenceException when finding main light in the scene. This exception could happen when there are multiple directional lights in the scene with shadows disabled.
Fixed SerializedObjectNotCreatableException. This exception could happen when there are multiple inspector windows open.

Changed

Improved culling accuracy.
Improved CPU performance when using lots of different details objects and trees on a terrain.
An error is now shown in the Nature Renderer inspector when a vegetation prefab contains both a LOD Group and Mesh Renderer on the root.
The default (internal) culling distance for objects without LOD Group is now 0.1% of the screen size (previously was 1% of screen size). This change fixes an issue that could cause the culling distance to be too small when using a large Field of View for the camera.

2021.1.4

Fixed

Fixed crash when adding Nature Renderer to a non-square terrain.
Fixed NullReferenceException when unloading a scene in a build with IL2CPP enabled. This exception could cause the app to freeze.
Nature Renderer now correctly reloads when the terrain size changed.
Fixed incorrect shadow rendering when using multiple cameras and Nature Shaders.
The focus of input fields in the vegetation list of the Nature Renderer component is now correctly reset when switching between objects.

2021.1.3

Fixed

Fixed issue that caused detail objects to not render at all on new terrains.
Fixed issue that could cause segments of detail objects to not render or flicker.
Fixed issue that caused detail objects to not immediately refresh when placing them on the terrain.

2021.1.2

Fixed

Fixed issue that would cause vegetation to render in incorrect places or completely distorted on Mac.
Fixed issue that could cause performance issues when looking at the world origin.
Fixed rendering performance impact of having vegetation registered on the terrain without placing any instances on the terrain.
Fixed integration with Nature Shaders. The fade values in the material are now correctly updated with the culling distance of Nature Renderer.
Fixed performance issue when using multiple cameras that are far apart from each other.

Changed

Improved performance when rendering sparse vegetation and empty patches of vegetation.
Added custom samplers to show the CPU performance of Nature Renderer in the profiler window.

For the full changelog take a look at the release notes:

https://visualdesigncafe.com/nature-renderer/docs/2021/release-notes

Please read the upgrade guide before updating from Nature Renderer 2020 to 2021:

https://visualdesigncafe.com/nature-renderer/docs/2021/upgrade-guide

Nature Renderer 2021・Perpetual License