Shader reference

Every artist-facing property on Hero Foliage Lit (Built-In, URP and HDRP — identical except where noted). Defaults are what a freshly generated material ships with.

Presets

Two rows of buttons do most tuning for you.

Quality presets (top of the inspector)

Preset	Sets
Hero Quality	Chain depth 3, gust on, translucency on, detail maps on, detail 0.18, translucency 0.55
Mid Distance	Chain depth 1, gust off, translucency off, detail off

Wind presets (inside the Wind section)Calm · Hero · Storm · Background. Background also forces chain depth 1 and turns gust off.

Start from a preset, then adjust.

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Surface

Property	Default	What it does
Albedo Alpha	white	Base colour texture. Alpha drives the cutout.
Base Color	white	Tint.
Alpha Cutoff	0.45	Alpha below this is discarded. Raise to thin out leaf cards, lower if edges disappear.
Normal Map	bump	Tangent-space normal. Needs mesh tangents — if it does nothing, check your importer.
Normal Scale	1	Strength.
Mask Map	white	Packed mask. Read according to Packed Mask Layout below.
Packed Mask Layout	0	0 Unity MaskMap (R metallic, G AO, A smoothness) · 1 ORM · 2 ORT · 3 AO/Rough/Height. Normally set for you by the texture resolver.
Metallic	0	Used when no mask map supplies it.
Smoothness	0.42	Used when no mask map supplies it.
AO Intensity	1	How strongly ambient occlusion applies.

Direct Specular — HDRP only

Property	Default	What it does
Use Direct Specular	on	Adds a direct specular term.
Specular Strength	0.6
Specular Tint	white

Detail and Variation

Property	Default	What it does
Use Detail Maps	on	Master toggle — turn off for distant foliage.
Detail Albedo	gray	Detail colour, tiled by its own scale/offset.
Detail Normal	bump	Detail normal.
Detail Normal Scale	0.35
Detail Strength	0.18	Blend amount.
Vertex Color Influence	0	How much baked vertex colour tints the surface.
Element Variation	0.08	Per-element brightness variation, so identical leaf cards do not look cloned.

Leaf Lighting

Property	Default	What it does
Use Translucency And Rim	on	Master toggle for both effects below.
Translucency Color	soft green	Colour of light passing through leaves.
Translucency Strength	0.55
Translucency Power	2.2	Higher = tighter to the light direction.
Rim Color	pale green	Edge light colour.
Rim Strength	0.18
Rim Power	3.5	Higher = thinner rim.

Quality — the performance section

Property	Default	What it does
Parent Chain Depth	3	The biggest performance lever. How many parent hops the shader replays. 3 = full inheritance; 1 = much cheaper, good for mid-distance; 0 = no inheritance.
Use Gust	on	Large-scale gusting.
Use Leaf Flutter	on	High-frequency leaf motion.
Inherited Parent Motion	1	How much of the parent’s motion a child inherits. Below 1 loosens the hierarchy.
Structural Fused Bend	1	Blends the fused structural bend.

Wind

Property	Default	What it does
Master Wind Strength	0.45	Overall motion.
Master Wind Speed	1	Overall rate.
World Wind Direction	(1,0,0)	World-space direction.
Extent Influence	0.25	How much an element’s swing arm scales its motion. Higher = long branches move much more than short ones.
Gust Strength	0.25
Gust Scale	0.22	Spatial size of gusts.
Gust Speed	0.65
Gust Front Scale	0.15	Per-instance gust travel. 0 = every tree gusts in unison; higher = gusts move across the world.

The four tiers

Tier	Strength	Speed	Reads
Level 1 Trunk	0	0.55	Wind bucket 0
Level 2 Big Branch	0.18	0.9	Wind bucket 1
Level 3 Small Branch	0.32	1.35	Wind bucket 2
Level 4 Leaf	0.58	2.4	Wind bucket 3

Plus Level 4 Leaf Flutter (0.32) and Leaf Micro Flutter (0.025).

Level 1 ships at 0 deliberately — a swaying trunk reads as wrong on most trees. Raise it only when you want visible trunk bend.

Each tier reads the wind bucket, not the hierarchy level. See the manual’s Concepts section for the distinction.

Debug

Property	Default	What it does
Debug View	Lit	0 Lit · 1 Hierarchy Level · 2 Static Mask · 3 Element Color · 4 Parent Element · 5 Axis · 6 Extent · 7 Pivot Position · 8 Parent Pivot · 9 Wind Displacement
Debug Position Scale	0.18	Scales position-based debug views.
Debug Displacement Scale	4	Scales the displacement view.

Caution

The preview material’s Debug Mode uses a different numbering than the hero material’s Debug View. Same-sounding control, different meanings — always read the named entries in the dropdown rather than the number.

Bake payload — do not hand-edit

These are written by the bake and read by the shader. Changing them breaks the lookup and unrelated parts of the tree will animate.

Property	What it is
Pivot Parent Data	Pivot position and packed parent / bucket / static data
Axis Extent Data	Forward axis and normalised swing arm
Element Count	Number of elements in the bake
Lookup UV Channel	Which mesh UV channel carries the per-element lookup

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Properties without a material UI

Four wind-character properties exist on the shader but are not drawn in the material inspector. Three of them are exposed on the Wind Controller component, which is the intended way to tune them:

Property	Default	Where to set it
Gust Detail	1	Wind Controller (0 = single-octave legacy gust, 1 = three-octave fractal)
Shelter Strength	0.25	Wind Controller — elements facing into the wind sway less
Lean Strength	0.12	Wind Controller — constant downwind lean
Bend Falloff	1	No UI. 1 = linear bow, 2 = whippy tips, 0 = rigid

HDRP additionally declares Use Main Light, Receive Shadows and Main Light Wrap without drawing them.

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Impostor Card shader

Used on the far LOD. Written by the impostor builder — only the last is worth touching.

Property	Default	Notes
Albedo Atlas / Normal Atlas	—	Written by capture
Frames	8	Views per axis. Written by capture
Card Size	10	World size. Written by capture
Alpha Cutoff	0.4
Cell Inset	2	Texel inset to avoid atlas bleed
Ambient Boost	1	Brightens the card to match the lit mesh — the one you may want to tune