Gaia 2021 HDRP grass not working

[JimmyD]

Hi!

There is an issue with HDRP and Gaia where generating grass on terrain displays nothing but white decals.

 

I'm aware that Unity HDRP did not support detail objects for terrains pre 2021.3.x version. However it is now fully implemented.

Can we expect an update to Gaia 2021 shortly to support this as well?

[Bryan]

We are looking into this to see about implementing the new grass system they use. 

As far as the white planes are concerned, is this happening only in the editor? 
If so this is normal. If its happening in runtime, have you added flora yet to the terrains. 
If not to do this you need to go to Window - Procedural Worlds - Flora - Add Flora to all terrains. 

[Bryan]

Please note that this is a Gaia Pro 2021 feature though, Gaia 2021 doesnt have flora. 
You would need to use a different asset for rendering grass. 
If you are planning on just trying to do Unity we are looking into this. 

 

[Peter]

Hi @JimmyD, to further clarify this: 
 

• Unity did originally not have support for Grass in HDRP, we added our own vegetation rendering system called Flora in Gaia Pro 2021 to be able to render grass in that pipeline 
• Unity has since then added support for instanced Grass rendering in HDRP natively
• Gaia supports the Unity instanced Grass rendering already if you set it up in the resource settings for the Grass spawner:
  
  The prefab that you use in there needs to use a shader that works with the Unity Grass instancing system (e.g. the Standard shader)
• We did not yet adapt our biomes to use the unity system, part of the reason being that this would cause issues if an user runs an earlier version where this feature was not available - we would then need to provide "Legacy Spawners" that use the older version of the grass system instead
• We plan to address this in a future update

[JimmyD]

On 2/8/2023 at 2:49 AM, Peter said:

Hi @JimmyD, to further clarify this: 
 

• Unity did originally not have support for Grass in HDRP, we added our own vegetation rendering system called Flora in Gaia Pro 2021 to be able to render grass in that pipeline 
• Unity has since then added support for instanced Grass rendering in HDRP natively
• Gaia supports the Unity instanced Grass rendering already if you set it up in the resource settings for the Grass spawner:
  
  The prefab that you use in there needs to use a shader that works with the Unity Grass instancing system (e.g. the Standard shader)
• We did not yet adapt our biomes to use the unity system, part of the reason being that this would cause issues if an user runs an earlier version where this feature was not available - we would then need to provide "Legacy Spawners" that use the older version of the grass system instead
• We plan to address this in a future update

I have "Use GPU instancing" enabled, "Enable flora system" disabled. Grass prefab has GPU instancing enabled. No objects are spawned. Is Gaia 2021 Pro a requirement for this to work?

[Peter]

17 hours ago, JimmyD said:

I have "Use GPU instancing" enabled, "Enable flora system" disabled. Grass prefab has GPU instancing enabled. No objects are spawned. Is Gaia 2021 Pro a requirement for this to work?

No, this should work with the non-pro version as well. If you take the prefab and add it to the terrain manually in the terrain inspector in GPU instanced mode, then paint it on manually as well (completely bypassing Gaia), do you see the object being rendered then?
If not, then the issue might be with the object itself or the shader used, for example, I know the system does not support LODs.

[Bryan]

That would mean that the materials are not setup correctly. 
Have you installed shaders from the Gaia Manager? 

[Mike Wuetherick]

Sorry accidentally cross-posted on another thread, removed my question so it doesn't pollute the OP's question

[Bryan]

thanks

 

[JimmyD]

On 2/20/2023 at 11:13 AM, Peter said:

No, this should work with the non-pro version as well. If you take the prefab and add it to the terrain manually in the terrain inspector in GPU instanced mode, then paint it on manually as well (completely bypassing Gaia), do you see the object being rendered then?
If not, then the issue might be with the object itself or the shader used, for example, I know the system does not support LODs.

The LOD was the issue. Thank's a bunch.

[Bryan]

Thank you for the update