Nature & wind

Choose CrowPSX/Nature/Lite, Default, or PBR for leaves, grass, vines, and similar foliage.

1. Assign the Albedo texture and keep Use Main Texture Alpha enabled.
2. Nature shaders begin in Cutout mode with Cull Off.
3. Open Nature Wind and apply the closest preset: Gentle Leaves, Grass Breeze, Shrub, Tree Canopy, or Strong Wind.
4. Choose an Anchoring Source:
   • Local Height for grass and plants with a ground-level pivot
   • Vertex Alpha for authored per-vertex anchoring
   • UV2 Y when the mesh stores a wind weight in its second UV channel
   • Mask Texture for UV-authored control
5. Adjust Maximum Bend first. Use low Sway/Gust frequencies for natural movement, then add Leaf Flutter sparingly.
6. Verify realtime shadows. Baked shadows use the mesh rest pose.

Nature variants are separate from the regular surface family, so wind deformation does not add vertex cost to ordinary materials. They start in Cutout mode with culling disabled, which is appropriate for common leaf and grass cards but can be changed in Rendering.

CrowPSX/Nature/Default#

The Default surface feature set plus animated foliage wind, grunge, and emission.

CrowPSX/Nature/Lite#

The reduced Lite surface feature set plus foliage wind. Use it for large amounts of simple grass, leaf cards, vines, and background plants.

CrowPSX/Nature/PBR#

The full PBR surface feature set plus foliage wind, including separate or packed maps, ambient occlusion, height parallax with floor thresholding, smoothness or roughness response, linked PBR UVs, grunge, and emission.

Nature Wind controls#

• Wind Enabled: master switch for the deformation
• Wind Presets: Still, Gentle Leaves, Grass Breeze, Shrub, Tree Canopy, and Strong Wind
• Wind Direction: downwind heading in degrees
• Maximum Bend: maximum downwind rotation in degrees
• Sway Frequency: broad movement in cycles per second (Hz)
• Sway Wavelength: world-space size of the broad wind wave
• Gust Influence / Frequency / Wavelength: occasional smooth pulses layered on the steady wind
• Leaf Flutter / Frequency / Wavelength: small high-frequency rotational response
• Plant Variation: offsets duplicated plants so they do not move in synchronization
• Flex Distribution and Mask Falloff: shape how motion builds from anchored vertices toward flexible tips
• Anchoring Source: Local Height, Vertex Alpha, UV2 Y, or Mask Texture
• Anchor Height and Full Motion Height: the local Y range the Local Height source maps across, from fully anchored to fully flexible
• Wind Mask, Wind Mask Channel, and Invert Wind Mask: the texture, channel, and polarity used by the Mask Texture source

Nature wind rotates vertices around the anchor instead of adding a free world-space offset, so leaves and stems remain attached to the plant pivot. The optional Wind Mask texture uses its own sampler state. Realtime Forward and ShadowCaster passes use the same deformation, while Unity/Bakery meta passes keep the rest pose because baked lighting cannot represent continuous motion.