Vegetation Shader

The Vegetation shader is used to render trees, bushes, grass and other vegetation, as well as imparting various bending motion effects.

See the following guidelines for best results and performance with this shader:

• Use an AlphaTest value of 50 for opacity.
• Use a Diffuse color value of 128,128,128 for lighting.

Shader Parameters

Bending branch amplitude
Defines the movement of blue color in the complex bending setup.
Default value: -0.5

Bending edges amplitude
Defines the movement of red color in the in the complex bending setup.
Default value: 0.2

Blend Factor
Changes visibility of blending layer. Blendlayer generation parameter must be enabled first.
Default value: 0

Blend Falloff
Changes the falloff of blending.
Default value: 1

Blend Layer 2 Spec
Changes specular intensity of second blend layer. Blendlayer generation parameter must be enabled first.
Default value:

Blend Layer 2 Tiling
Changes tiling of second blend layer. Blendlayer generation parameter must be enabled first.
Default value:

Blend Mask Tiling
Changes tiling of blend mask.
Default value: 1

Cap opacity fall off
Controls the fading of alpha test textures when seen at a steep angle (so they look less like a plane). A value of 1 means it’s turned off; 0 means it’s fully activated.
Default value: 1

Detail bending frequency
Defines the bending speed for complex (wind) bending. Make sure that this value is in the correct proportion to the wind in your level.
Default value: 1

Indirect bounce color
Sets the amount of indirectly bounced color.
Default value: 136, 136, 136

Terrain Color Blend
Controls how much of the terrain color is blended into the diffuse color when up close. Use Terrain Color for the selected vegetation object must be enabled first, except when AutoMerge is enabled.
Default value: 0

Terrain Color Blend Dist
Controls how much of the terrain color is blended into the diffuse color at a distance. Use Terrain Color for the selected vegetation object must be enabled first, except when AutoMerge is enabled.
Default value: 0.5

Transmittance Color
Applies color tint for translucency. Leaves or Grass shader generation parameter must be enabled first.
Default value: 255, 255, 203

Shader Generation Parameters

Leaves
Enables leaf shading and leaves animation. This parameter causes the gaming Lumberyard to use a much more complex (expensive) shading, so activate only for leaves rendering.

Grass
Enables simple and cheap grass rendering. Specular and normal map setting are essentially disabled, so the shading is only diffuse.

Detail bending
Enables detail bending, which simulates wind on vegetation objects. Activate for leaves and grass only. Also, make sure to paint required vertex colors.

Detail mapping
Enables detail mapping.

Blendlayer
Enables normal-mapped diffuse layer blended on top of base material.

Displacement mapping
Enables displacement mapping. Requires a height map (_displ format).

Phong tessellation
Enables rough approximation of smooth surface subdivision.

PN triangles tessellation
Enables rough approximation of smooth surface subdivision.