unity3d-billboard-generator

A Billboard Generator with support for multi-bake passes! Built in an afternoon ~

Features

Generates a simple cross-section billboard for a prefab (auto picks last LOD of prefab to render if it exists)
Support for multiple "bake passes" - allows you to bake other data (masks, normals) that you want to use

Create a BillboardRenderSettings via "Create/Ardenfall/Foliage/Billboard Render Settings"
Add a new Billboard Texture. This will be your albedo+alpha texture.
Ensure the Billboard Texture's textureID matches the texture property in your billboard shader
Add a new Bake Pass. Keep the values as they are by default. (this pass is using the default shader, so no custom shader needed)
Create a BillboardAssets via "Create/Ardenfall/Foliage/Billboard Asset"
Add your foliage prefab to the Prefab field
Add your render settings to the Render Settings field
Click "Generate Billboard"
To see the results, click "Spawn Visual"

Lets create a custom bakepass to use normals in our billboard!
Add a new Billboard Texture to your Render Settings. Set the property id to "_Normals", and toggle off Alpha Is Transparency.
Add a new Bake Pass. Uncheck "A", since we have no need for the alpha channel (normals can be baked into 3 channels).
Create a new shader. This will be your "normal bake pass shader". Make your shader output the normals of each fragment. (Literally rendering the normals)
Insert this shader in the "Custom Shader" field in your new Bake Pass.
To use this normal texture, simply sample the texture "_Normals" in your billboard.

When baking a pass, you may want to ensure certain properties of the rendered material is a certain value. You can do this via the Material Overrides field.
There is a builtin "Cutoff" value that is applied to the generated billboard material. This is optional, but if you want to use it the property name must be "_Cutoff".
You don't Have to use multiple bake passes per texture - you could easily pack multiple things (normals and occlusion, for example) into a single RGBA texture in a single bake pass. The multiple bake pass per texture feature is merely for convenience.
There are a few lines dedicated to URP - if you want to use this in builtin/HDRP it will take a little bit of work to port, but I promise it would only take a few minutes.