archived-shaders

[leaden turret]

when you say dynamic objects move - i guess what remains to be clarified is; if my entire scene is static, just the only thing moving is - myself i.e. the player / the camera controller moving around the scene, is that what you call a static scene which CAN be reflected from-any-angle to-any-angle with reflection probes on the cheap, and it will look correct even for a moving camera? or if the camera is moving around the scene at all - all bets are off, baked reflection probes is not the way to go. instead we must use the other solutions like spreading out updating reflection probes over multiple frames, or probes are not the way to go altogether just all-out planar reflections

i did in fact make a scene pretty close to what you're describing at that github link - lemme know if you ever get around to giving it a spin, either to see where i went wrong or if you can show a little bit of how to correctly implement what you're describing

and thanks i appreciate the time & advice/explanations 👍 🙌

[rigid sandal]

Could anyone help me with this errors? i cannot figure it out

It works in editor but not on console itself

[tight phoenix]

im struggling, im really really really really struggling to produce this appearance

no matter what combination of noise I use, I cant solve it

the key critical thing that never works is smudging

its easy to make cells that roughly look like the above

but they -always- have soft gradient peaks from edge to top

i need desperately to have the secret to smudge those peaks

nothing ive tried has worked

closest ive managed and its completely shit and wrong

how do I smudge the white peaks closer to the dark valleys?

everything ive tried has failed to achieve this

[regal stag]

A Smoothstep might help "flatten" the peaks a bit, not sure if that's exactly what you want though

[tight phoenix]

yeah its not enough to just flatten it, I want to smudge the peaks away from the perfect center of each voronoi cell

but I cant find a way to change the voronoi cell center

like this is pretty good, but its missing that critical step of smuding the peaks

no matter how much I distort the UVs, the peaks are always dead center because thats just how voronoi works

[karmic hatch]

Maybe if you're doing offsetting, sample the new noise, then use that to boost the offset, and sample a final layer of noise using those boosted coordinates

[tight phoenix]

sample the new noise okay
boost the offset? How is this done? Adding the new noise to the UVs that created that noise?

hmm that has sorta worked 🤔 its quite messy but maybe if I tweak the values a bit

[karmic hatch]

Adding, or multiplying by, or something.

[visual mesa]

Anyone have any examples on how I can use DrawMeshInstancedProcedural to draw thousands of mesh instances in different positions? I can't seem to get it to work

[shadow locust]

Never used procedural, but have used DrawMeshInstancedIndirect. Would a source on that be helpful to you?

[visual mesa]

Yes, that would be helpful! Thank you. From what I understand DrawMeshInstancedProcedural is basically a wrapper for DrawMeshInstancedIndirect that you can call from C# scripts if you know the number of instances to draw

I could be wrong though

[shadow locust]

This article was incredibly helpful for me https://toqoz.fyi/thousands-of-meshes.html

but I'm not sure your characterization of the methods is quite correct.

[distant sparrow]

importing the toon fantasy nature pack and all the materials turn pink with this error

[last sable]

What render pipeline are you using? I think that pack is only compatible with LWRP and URP.

[distant sparrow]

yeah, this is the standard first person sample project

which is URP

[last sable]

Was there a separate URP package that you need to install? There often is.

[distant sparrow]

oh yeah, found and it worked

[visual mesa]

Do you know how you might detect a ray intersection with one of the meshes?

I see you can use Bounds.IntersectRay(Ray ray), but you would need to know the bounds for each instance. I'm a bit confused on if DrawMeshInstanceIndirect just draws "one mesh" broken up into mulitple pieces. Or if all of the cubes I'm seeing in scene are in fact separate meshes. I'm a bit new to shaders and draw calls 🙂

[shadow locust]

The mesh in the example is a quad

They are drawing the quad hundreds of thousands of times

the quad is the entire mesh

it's not broken up

you could replace the quad with a mesh of the statue of david

[visual mesa]

So is there no way then to detect intersection with a specific cube?

[shadow locust]

and you'd have 100,000 little stars of david

[shadow locust]

A GameObject cube?

[visual mesa]

Yeah, but I'm trying to avoid GameObjects due to performance 😦

[shadow locust]

You have to realize that DrawMesh, in all its incarnations, is just a way of drawing things

[visual mesa]

I basically need what GameObject colliders do, but without them 😄

[shadow locust]

it doesn't create anything in or interact with the hierarchy at all

[visual mesa]

For improved performance

[shadow locust]

if you want to get collisions of these meshes with a shape or something, you'd have to write the math to do that in your compute shader

you certainly can't use Unity's Physics engine(s) which are CPU based

the example I shared has a primitive implementation of such a thing though

[visual mesa]

Yeah, I don't need Physics at all. My use case is I have thousands of cubes that need their positions moved programmatically. Users can not move or manipulate the objects (no physics needed). However, I do need to be able to detect if a user points at a specific cube (and mimic a selection interaction)

[shadow locust]

If you look at the last animation on the page you can see a manipulation in a similar vein to what you're talking about perhaps

[visual mesa]

Could I achieve that with a custom compute shader?

[shadow locust]

maybe? I'm not sure I fully understand the nature of what you're asking

I'd just say look at the last animation on the page and see if it's in the same realm of stuff as you're talking about

[visual mesa]

Yeah, I'll take a look. Thanks!

@shadow locust To give a better idea of what I'd like to do.... these cubes are all moving and I'd like to detect which specific cube my raycast is intersecting with

https://docs.unity3d.com/2020.3/Documentation/ScriptReference/Graphics.DrawMeshInstancedIndirect.html

I followed the example here to create the scene in the picture

[shadow locust]

you'd have to do the raycast in the compute shader

Something like https://answers.unity.com/questions/692017/computeshader-version-of-physicsraycast.html

[tight phoenix]

what is the formula to mask out a specific range of values, with falloff?

desired end result is putting in a value for time and the falloff range returning just those bits

my attempt here is flawed though, it isnt behaving

better example - here ive manually adjusted all the values to get just the vales between that range

but I need the formula so automatically determine those 4 values from just the two values of range and time

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/669975874455732224/1025521073996967979/unknown.png

certain formulas work at very specific values
but stop working as soon as those values change

ideal outcome is that as the time value changes, the range value does not need compensating adjustments, the range value falls off from where time is

if it was working, time at 0.5 and range at 0.1 would give me 1/10th of the values from the exact center of the 256 value range a color has

[tight phoenix]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/669975874455732224/1025525670840905740/unknown.png

I know I will need a values time +/- range , but then how do I use those it isolate a thin band

[cosmic prairie]

maybe 1 - min(1, abs(threshold - input) * falloff)

if thats what you're after

this will have falloff both ways, I'm too sleepy to understand what you're after exactly, hopefully this was it, goodnight 😴

one more thing - if you want the smoothness off the falloff do 1 - min(1, pow(abs(threshold - input) * falloff), smoothness)

(couldn't go to sleep with this retained information)

[tight phoenix]

I think im making some kind of pemdas error trying to parse the correct order of operation of

1 - min(1, abs(threshold - input) * falloff)

one subtrating the minmum of 1 and the absolute of the threshold minus input, multiplied by falloff?

oh I was using Range for both threshold and falloff

but after fixing that, its still not working

so im definitely still making a pemdas error

got it working, turned out I did have the right maths, it was my values that were not working

turned it into a custom node though to be sure pedmas was correct

👍

[tight phoenix]

Does anyone have a link to a resource / tutorial that talks about how normals are calculated?
I don't want to fully replace the Lit behaviour, but I do want to add a simple blinn phong (?) specular highlight to a height map

I want to calculate 'normals' from this height, butI still want to use the actual Lit normals

but I am not sure how normals interact with manually calculated view direction spec / fresnel

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-VertexFragmentShaderExamples.html
reading this is way too code for me to make sense of how normals are used

I guess im trying to google normals for lighting for an unlit shader? Toon shader normal maps? yes im aware there is no light in the unlit shader but I just need to use that data for another purpose

https://danielilett.com/2020-03-21-tut5-urp-cel-shading/

oh looks like it might be covered in here

[rare charm]

I know just the basics about shaders. Is there a way to make a shader for a quad that makes the edges of the quad distorted?

[meager pelican]

  half3 h = normalize (lightDir + viewDir);
  half diff = max (0, dot (s.Normal, lightDir));

  float nh = max (0, dot (s.Normal, h));
  float spec = pow (nh, 48.0);

  half4 c;
  c.rgb = (s.Albedo * _LightColor0.rgb * diff + _LightColor0.rgb * spec) * atten;
  c.a = s.Alpha;
  return c;
}```
from here: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-SurfaceShaderLightingExamples.html

@tight phoenix

[meager pelican]

HOW you do it depends on what you want....but....in general just check the UV values and decide if you want to apply your distortion. The uv's will tell you how close to an edge you are in x and y, since they range from 0 to 1.

[kind juniper]

Assuming the mesh is properly uv-mapped.

[long moat]

Hello! is it possible to give a stencil shader different cutout shape? instead of the mesh shape. For example adding star shaped cutout texture will create a star shaped stencil in whatever it cuts through

[meager pelican]

That "star shaped cutout texture" could be used as a mask to stencil or not. It would require a specific stenciling pass, you'd discard any pixels that were not in the star. Probably use a Color Mask of 0, and just output the stencil.

[long moat]

and how do i make the stencil pass to consider the given texture as a shape to which to do a cutout?

currently my stencil simply replaces every shader that has:

            Ref 1
            Comp notequal
            Pass keep
        }```

This is the entire stencil shader right now:

Shader "Custom/Stencil"
{
    SubShader
    {
        Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" "Queue"="Geometry-1" }
        ColorMask 0
        ZWrite off
        
        Stencil
        {
            Ref 1
            Comp always
            Pass replace
        }
        
        Pass
        {
            Cull Back
            ZTest Less
        
            CGPROGRAM
            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag
            
            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
            };
            struct v2f
            {
                float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
            };
            v2f vert(appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.pos = UnityObjectToClipPos(v.vertex);
                return o;
            }
            half4 frag(v2f i) : COLOR
            {
                return half4(1,1,0,1);
            }
            
            ENDCG
        }
    } 
}

[regal stag]

You'd use something like clip(shapeTexSample.a - _AlphaClipThreshold) in the fragment shader

[long moat]

something like this?

{
    Properties
    {
        _MainTex("Albedo", 2D) = "white" {}
    }
    
    SubShader
    {
        Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" "Queue"="Geometry-1" }
        ColorMask 0
        ZWrite off
        
        Stencil
        {
            Ref 1
            Comp always
            Pass replace
        }
        
        Pass
        {
            Cull Back
            ZTest Less
        
            CGPROGRAM
            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag
        
            sampler2D _MainTex;
            
            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
            };
            struct v2f
            {
                float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
            };
            v2f vert(appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.pos = UnityObjectToClipPos(v.vertex);
                return o;
            }
            half4 frag(v2f i) : COLOR
            {
                return clip(_MainTex.a - _AlphaClipThreshold);
                //return half4(1,1,0,1);
            }
            
            ENDCG
        }
    } 
}```

forgive me if i make noobish mistakes 😅 im still learning how to handle with shaders..

[regal stag]

You need to sample the texture. The clip function also shouldn't be used for the return. It discards the pixel if the parameter passed in is less than 0. You'd still need to return your colour for the other pixels.

half4 frag(v2f i) : COLOR {
    float4 mainTexSample = tex2D(_MainTex, uv);
    clip(mainTexSample.a - _AlphaClipThreshold);
    return half4(1,1,0,1);
}

Also either change _AlphaClipThreshold to a hardcoded value (0.5 maybe), or provide a Float property as an input.

[long moat]

oh so its not something that exists as a parameter in this shader, alright

[regal stag]

Would also need float2 uv : TEXCOORD0; in appdata and v2f, and o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex); in the vertex shader to pass the uv through

Can find some examples here, https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-VertexFragmentShaderExamples.html
https://github.com/unity3d-jp/unitychan-crs/blob/master/Assets/UnityChanStage/Effects/Shaders/Unlit Alpha Cutout.shader

[long moat]

so um like this?

{
    Properties
    {
        _MainTex("Albedo", 2D) = "white" {}
        _AlphaClipThreshold("Alpha Threshold", Range(0, 1)) = 0.5
    }
    
    SubShader
    {
        Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" "Queue"="Geometry-1" }
        ColorMask 0
        ZWrite off
        
        Stencil
        {
            Ref 1
            Comp always
            Pass replace
        }
        
        Pass
        {
            Cull Back
            ZTest Less
        
            CGPROGRAM
            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag
        
            sampler2D _MainTex;
            
            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };
            struct v2f
            {
                float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };
            v2f vert(appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.pos = UnityObjectToClipPos(v.vertex);
                o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
                return o;
            }
            half4 frag(v2f i) : COLOR
            {
                float4 mainTexSample = tex2D(_MainTex, uv);
                clip(mainTexSample.a - _AlphaClipThreshold);
                return half4(1,1,0,1);
            }
            
            ENDCG
        }
    } 
}```

i mostly got to play with surface shaders, not with vert/frag shaders 😅

mmm i believe i did everything correct but it throws me this error:

[meager pelican]

Looks like you're missing an include that defines the TRANSFORM_TEX macro

Like UnityCG.cginc

let me get you the syntax

[long moat]

Hmm, comparing it to the unity docs cyan gave, everything looks correct, how do I add this macro?

Oh yep now I see it

I missed the unityCG

[meager pelican]

Put
#include "UnityCG.cginc" in there after the pragmas

float4 _MainTex_ST;```

[long moat]

now it throws me this error:

not sure how the clip supposed to work..

here is the updated script:

{
    Properties
    {
        _MainTex("Albedo", 2D) = "white" {}
        _AlphaClipThreshold("Alpha Threshold", Range(0, 1)) = 0.5
    }
    
    SubShader
    {
        Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" "Queue"="Geometry-1" }
        ColorMask 0
        ZWrite off
        
        Stencil
        {
            Ref 1
            Comp always
            Pass replace
        }
        
        Pass
        {
            Cull Back
            ZTest Less
        
            CGPROGRAM
            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag

            #include "UnityCG.cginc"
            
            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };
            struct v2f
            {
                float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };

            sampler2D _MainTex;
            float4 _MainTex_ST;
            
            v2f vert(appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.pos = UnityObjectToClipPos(v.vertex);
                o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
                return o;
            }
            half4 frag(v2f i) : COLOR
            {
                float4 mainTexSample = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv);
                clip(mainTexSample.a - _AlphaClipThreshold);
                return half4(1,1,0,1);
            }
            
            ENDCG
        }
    } 
}```

[meager pelican]

The param is a float.
If it is < 0, the fragment is discarded. So the math expression is written by you such that it returns a negative value for discarded pixels.

[long moat]

but, no how is it possible?

[meager pelican]

Change this line to:
_AlphaClipThreshold("Alpha Threshold", Range(0, 1.0)) = 0.5
and see if it helps. Explain later if it works.

[long moat]

nope, still the same error:

i changed the range to Float earlier but that did not help either

[regal stag]

You need float _AlphaClipThreshold; somewhere in the hlsl portion, outside the function scope. e.g. after the float4 _MainTex_ST; line

[meager pelican]

Oh, yeah, he didn't define it. 😉

The Properties don't do the defines.

[long moat]

yes now it works! Thank you so much @regal stag and @meager pelican 😁

[eternal walrus]

im having an error on my shader graphs, how can i fix it. note: i upgraded my project from built in to hdrp

[long moat]

Is it possible to make the stencil to work on on what infront of it? by that i mean between the object with the stencil shader on it and the camera, but cut nothing that is after that object

[zenith heron]

Hello, I made a shader for post-processing effects which most of my sprites use. One of these effects is a brightness effect which can range from -100 to 100, where -100 turns it completely dark and 100 completely white. However, changing the brightness value for one sprite does it for the others. I think I know why this happens, but I'm not sure what it's called, or how it can be prevented. Can anyone help me define this? Thank you very much for your time.

[bold breach]

hello, im new to untiy and im wondering how to create a cartoony outline effect like the image i attatched, if anyone could provide any tips or support that would be much appreciated
thanks

[grand jolt]

I am following a tutorial for a water shader but the water waves basically flash flood the entire map, my first instinct was to change the scale of the noise but that didn't do anything other than change the speed of the waves

It's a single big cube but I need it to be a single big cube for other reasons so is there a way to make the waves smaller

tried to fix with a tiling node

but it's 2D

[rare charm]

Why am I getting this weird effect on my alpha? The preview shows it the alpha is completely transparent but the scene view shows something completely different

[grand jolt]

anyone

pls

[karmic hatch]

Looks like it's going negative. Put it through a saturate() node at the end and it should work

[karmic hatch]

Before adding the waves to the position, multiply by a new wave height property.

[karmic hatch]

The usual way is to (in the shader) create a second mesh, which you then extrude outwards along the normal vectors, and then you flip the normals for it so you cull the front face (so it only appears behind your object). I think there might be a built-in shader for it?

[grand jolt]

ok the thing is the problem isn't exactly that they're too high but they should be applied on a smaller scale, like for example the voronoi for the ripples was too small, and it looked huge on the scene, so I had to make the voronoi scale like 50 for it to look normal

also

[meager pelican]

I ran your scene. I also tried a reflective plane with the standard shader. Your shader and the standard shader both worked, and the environmental reflections moved, while the player moved/turned. With similar performance between both shaders, since they're using the same lit routines (and using reflection probes).

[bold breach]

do you know how to get the built in shader

[grand jolt]

this is how it turned out

that's a mountain btw

[karmic hatch]

If the mesh's size is controlled by its transform's scale, you can get that fairly easily in the shader (there's an object node that holds it). If it's procedurally generated or something, so its size isn't primarily controlled by the transform's scale, you can create a property and set that using a script.

[grand jolt]

the waves are generated from a gradient noise so I guess it is

[meager pelican]

https://alexanderameye.github.io/notes/rendering-outlines/

[karmic hatch]

Looked it up, there's a package for it (at least one): https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.toonshader@0.6/manual/index.html (you can turn off all the features you don't want)

[grand jolt]

and what am I gonna do with the scale of the mesh if the scale doesn't make the waves smaller

[karmic hatch]

How are you generating your mesh?

Actually just rather than feeding a UV or something into the noise, feed in the position

[grand jolt]

the mesh itself is just a cube that spans the whole map, and the shader displaces it with this

[karmic hatch]

A cube only has vertices at the corners, so you won't be displacing much

you'll just move the four corners around

[grand jolt]

so I have to subdivide the cube

[karmic hatch]

Indeed

[grand jolt]

still does the same thing

just made it a little bit laggier

[karmic hatch]

you want your subdivisions to be the same size as the waves or smaller

[grand jolt]

ok

still floods

I'ma send the whole shader

anything about it

[bold breach]

it gives me a 404 error on hte github page

[karmic hatch]

it doesn't for me, it sends me to https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/com.unity.toonshader

[grand jolt]

@karmic hatch

[karmic hatch]

For some reason the image is really small so I can't read the text

[grand jolt]

ok I'ma send different parts of it

[karmic hatch]

In your tiling and offset node, in place of UV0 put in the position

[grand jolt]

ok

[grand jolt]

still goes above

these are my settings btw

[rare charm]

That fixed it. Thanks! I'm newish to shaders so I'm still learning.

[karmic hatch]

Between the noise and multiplying by the normal vector, multiply by a 'wave height' property.

[grand jolt]

multiply the noise or the normals

[karmic hatch]

The output from the noise

[grand jolt]

ok

[karmic hatch]

(Since you're multiplying both together, it's mathematically equivalent, but in one it has to do three multiplications while the noise is just a float so one multiplication. Very minor performance difference but might as well take it)

[grand jolt]

partially fixed it, the waves aren't like spread out but instead a very very subtle and unnoticeable unless on the shore kind of wave

[karmic hatch]

What happens as you change the wave height property?

[grand jolt]

they cover up more ground

had to set it to 0.05 to get something noticeable that respects the map

[karmic hatch]

Oh also after the noise (but before the multiplication) subtract 0.5

Then the water shouldn't rise up

[grand jolt]

ok

aaaand I ran into a problem that I saw coming but chose to ignore

it's a water shader

made for a plane

applied to a cube

so stuff like this happens

[grand jolt]

the waves are still unnoticeable it just makes stuff drain up

ykw I might as well just leave it with the waves it already have

at least you can see it on the shore

[karmic hatch]

Have you made the wave height property larger?

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

If you subtract 0.5 from the noise, the waves should grow without the water overall rising

[grand jolt]

as I said it is still one big wave

and yes, I subdivided it

a lot

[karmic hatch]

Did you swap the UV for the position in the tiling and offset node?

And for the tiling vector2, put in a float property for wave scale

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

Swap the space from object to world

That should do it

[karmic hatch]

actually this is unnecessary you already have a wave scale property

going into the noise node

[grand jolt]

what the fuck

[grand jolt]

oh ok

[karmic hatch]

just realised, instead of just position, either use a swizzle node or split + vector 2 and take the (x, z) components

[grand jolt]

I'll use swizzle

whatever that is

[karmic hatch]

Swizzling is just playing with the components of a float1/2/3/4

[grand jolt]

what do I input tho

the position?

[karmic hatch]

yes position in, and for the mask do xz

[grand jolt]

so this

[karmic hatch]

yes

[grand jolt]

ok

this IS cube compatible right

I am using one

[karmic hatch]

multiply the normal by (0,1,0)

(that'll stop the sides from shifting)

[grand jolt]

ok

[karmic hatch]

And then just play around with the properties until it is good

[grand jolt]

better

[grand jolt]

ok

IT WORKS

TYSM

wo'a

[karmic hatch]

ayy nice :)

[grand jolt]

wo'a?

wo'a

what does that mean

wo'a

like woah?

wait

. . .

I get it now

water

[meager pelican]

#archived-shaders message
CC: @amber saffron ^^
Basically, @leaden turret, because you're using a lit shader and a metallic surface, you're using the reflection probe method. The only way around that is to do your own lighting and "manual vert/frag" type of thing if you want to avoid using probes.

Unity is auto-generating the lighting calcs.

[grand jolt]

I couldn't find this node

the only other one is scene depth

and it doesn't look like this

[karmic hatch]

Seems to be an Unreal engine node

[grand jolt]

it's on unity tho

[karmic hatch]

maybe there's a package for it or something; or maybe they made a custom node

[grand jolt]

it was on sub graphs

on the video

it was under sub graphs

[karmic hatch]

Ok so they made a sub graph for it ig

[grand jolt]

ok but then how do I get the node

[karmic hatch]

I think if you subtract length(fragment position <view space>) from (depth <eye>)/(normalize(view direction <view space>).b) it should give the distance between the water surface and the background

[grand jolt]

so how do I do that

in the nodes

[karmic hatch]

all of those functions are nodes

[grand jolt]

oh

and how did you know that's what the node did

[karmic hatch]

I'm assuming it's the distance between water surface and background.

If it's not, it's certainly a function of that

[grand jolt]

it's for foam

so idrk

[karmic hatch]

For foam you just check when that distance is small, then paint the surface white

[grand jolt]

I didn't understand anything after the word from

but something like this right?

[karmic hatch]

yes

then there's a depth node and you want to divide that by the z component (aka b component) of the normalized view space view direction

(it might actually be a multiply instead of a divide, now i think of it. I just remember the depth itself being biased depending on the view direction)

[karmic hatch]

yes, but swap scene depth from linear 01 to eye

[grand jolt]

now I just check if the distance is less than 1

and if it is

how do I paint it white actually

[karmic hatch]

Or more generally some property

[grand jolt]

yeah

[karmic hatch]

Use a comparison node to do the check, and then have a branch node that either outputs the water color or white

(and a similar branch for alpha)

[grand jolt]

and it's supossed to look like this

[karmic hatch]

At the moment it'll just look like straight lines

Then you can add noise to the distance and then it'll make it look better

[grand jolt]

what part is the distance

[karmic hatch]

just the result of all of this is what i mean

[grand jolt]

so after all of those nodes

I add a noise

got i

it

so this

and after the branch a noise texture

[karmic hatch]

I would put the caustics with the blue color before the branch, rather than adding them afterwards

also it seems you're adding the base color to itself?

[grand jolt]

oh true

[karmic hatch]

in the bottom image, take the output of the addition node on the far left, and then put that into the false on the branch

[grand jolt]

is the bottom image this

[karmic hatch]

yes

[grand jolt]

turned white

[karmic hatch]

you're adding the simple noise after the branch, so you're just adding on average light grey to all of the water

[grand jolt]

so I add the noise if it is true

and that would go on the true?

like

in between the true

I put the add

[karmic hatch]

you could put the noise in the bottom part of the comparison

[grand jolt]

and that would do it?

[karmic hatch]

you want the noise to be affecting the comparison though, not the final color

[grand jolt]

oh

still white

[karmic hatch]

try negating the b component of normalized view direction

[grand jolt]

now there's no foam at all

[karmic hatch]

swap the inputs to the subtract node

[grand jolt]

like, make b be in a and make a be in b

that doesn't change anything

right?

aand everything's white again

[karmic hatch]

yes

[karmic hatch]

can you just put the output of the subtract into emission color, remove everything going into base color and set base to black?

(debug)

[grand jolt]

ok

green

[karmic hatch]

you are putting a float into the emission output, yes?

the line starts out as blue?

[grand jolt]

I think

[grand jolt]

what line

[karmic hatch]

the lines connecting nodes in shadergraph are colored depending on what type of struct it is. Float1 is blue, float2 is green, float3 is yellow, and float4 is pink.

Bool is purple

[grand jolt]

oh it starts out green

wait

nvm

it starts out blue

so what do I do now

[karmic hatch]

is the water still green?

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

that is... genuinely baffling. It's a float, it should be greyscale

[karmic hatch]

that subtract then goes into emission right?

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

and you set base color to black?

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

can you set alpha to 1

[grand jolt]

ok

still green

what is my shader just

cursed or smthn

(joking)

[karmic hatch]

can you set emission to black too?

if it's still green then that's probably something other than the shader being very weird

[grand jolt]

but then what will I assign the emission to

I mean

the substract

base color?

[karmic hatch]

just assign like base color set it to black

[grand jolt]

ok

saved it

it's still green

as base color

[karmic hatch]

i mean set both emission and base color to black, have nothing going into the fragment node

could even go all the way and set the shader to be unlit

[grand jolt]

ok

it is still green

[karmic hatch]

very strange

[grand jolt]

so

what do I do about it

[karmic hatch]

Can you try making the shader unlit and setting the base color to black and alpha to 1

[grand jolt]

ok

still green

looks like my shader is just cursed

[karmic hatch]

any post processing effects or something?

[grand jolt]

looks black here tho

[grand jolt]

only underwater tho

[karmic hatch]

can you turn those off just to check

[grand jolt]

they only get triggered underwater

[karmic hatch]

when the camera is underwater?

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

ah

ok i don't know why it's green but let's get back on track and hope it's just adding on or something

[grand jolt]

ok

alright so

it's all white

[karmic hatch]

can you try putting the output of the divide here into the color node

[grand jolt]

ok

[karmic hatch]

and move the camera close to shallow water

[grand jolt]

wait on the base color?

ok

also it's green

[karmic hatch]

still dark green?

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

ok try negating it first then

(or remove the negate node in there)

[grand jolt]

now it's white

[karmic hatch]

does it turn grey if you get very close to shallow water?

[agile mango]

Quick question, do I need to us a URP or HDRP project to use PBR stuff? It's been a hot minute since I've messed with that stuff.

Or is it just something I can import to an existing project?

[karmic hatch]

I think the default lit material already has slots for normal/smoothness/metallic/etc maps in BiRP

[grand jolt]

wait lemme see

do you mean shallow as if it's like the shore

[karmic hatch]

yes

[grand jolt]

if so

then no

no it doesn't

[karmic hatch]

can you try dividing by 10 or something

[grand jolt]

dividing what

[karmic hatch]

the result of everything that's going into the color output

[grand jolt]

ok

like this right?

[karmic hatch]

yes

[grand jolt]

when do you get to the part where I get done with the foam so I can finally finish stuff up and prepare the build

don't want to rush things up but

I've been like 1hr on this

alright I'ma check it now

[karmic hatch]

there are certainly tutorials online

[grand jolt]

yes

it gets gray

[karmic hatch]

does it change as you get nearer or further away?

[grand jolt]

yes

[karmic hatch]

back to this then, if you just remove the negate node on the bottom, does it go dark near the shore?

[grand jolt]

lemme see

it becomes black

always black

it's kinda spooky actually

[karmic hatch]

if you negate the output, does it change?

(specifically, does it go back near the shore, and white elsewhere)

[grand jolt]

lemme check

yes but it turns gray

not black

[karmic hatch]

at the very very edge of the shore does it turn black?

also does it change color as you move the camera or change the direction you're looking in?

[grand jolt]

still gray

[grand jolt]

no

[karmic hatch]

ok that's good at least

anyway so then you can just plug that into the comparison node, maybe just branch between 1 and 0 for now and see what that looks like

[grand jolt]

already there

[karmic hatch]

actually you can just put the bool from the comparison into the color directly

[grand jolt]

like this

ok

[karmic hatch]

yes

[grand jolt]

can't plug the comparison to the color

[karmic hatch]

ah ok thought you could

sad

[grand jolt]

so

what do I do now

[karmic hatch]

same as branch with 1 and 0 so just do that

[grand jolt]

ok

it remains white now

[karmic hatch]

any specks of black at the shore?

[grand jolt]

no

[karmic hatch]

try adding 1 to the noise

[grand jolt]

ok

nothin

@karmic hatch

[karmic hatch]

if you set the bottom of the comparison to 10, still nothing?

[grand jolt]

lemme see

yep

still nothing

[karmic hatch]

going to try to whack something together on my end and will send it if/when it works

[grand jolt]

ykw I'm just not going to add foam at all

it looks good already

and I want to get this done today

been working on it too long atp

[karmic hatch]

good luck

[grand jolt]

thanks

you can still try tho

and if it works then I'll add it back

[karmic hatch]

i will dw

[long moat]

something tells me i've been there.. hmm..

[grand jolt]

that must be because of the map

did you notice

[long moat]

just stay hidden from nintendo 😅

[grand jolt]

dw this project isn't a game I'm planning to make public

at least not at this stage

of development

mayybe when I have more flexibility over it

[grand jolt]

anything yet @karmic hatch

[karmic hatch]

yep

just getting it so it looks like water now

[grand jolt]

ok

[karmic hatch]

here's the bit that does the foam check, the bool then goes into a branch

[grand jolt]

so I just have to copy that?

alr

and the bool goes into a branch, which has white on the true port

and the normal water color in the false color

and then I add it to the other color

and that should be it

right?

@karmic hatch

[karmic hatch]

you shouldn't add anything after the branch

[grand jolt]

nvm

[hearty obsidian]

Using unlit sprite graphs for some UI images. Had to update to 2021 LTS for some unrelated reason, now half of the UI shaders render as fully white. Can't seem to pinpoint the issue. Same nodes are reused across both working and non working shaders. Any idea?

The issue occurs on iOS exclusively

[meager pelican]

@leaden turret CC: @amber saffron
Just for fun, I've played around with driving a single real-time reflection probe via script. It costs about 15 frames/second and that's on a medium desktop card. This might vary, though, due to scene rendering time. Because if the underlying scene isn't efficient, neither is the probe rendering. It's a catch-22, even at low probe resolution. Turning off vegetation helped a lot so there's some optimization that can be done in the test-scene to get closer to real benchmarks.
I've got it set to only refresh the probe if the player moves some set distance from last-known-position.

I'm doubting it is practical for low-end mobile, but I can't really test it unless I build and load it and I'll leave that to you, @leaden turret, if you want to experiment I can post more.

Such a technique makes accurate reflections.
Next thing I'll do, though, is go back to your baked probes and see if I can adjust them to not have the doubling effect and to be every X world-units apart so they don't glitch so much.

[grand jolt]

doesn't the reflection just make like a mini camera in front of the reflective face(s) and take a screenshot and put it in the face every frame

don't know why that's so performance intensive

[meager pelican]

Well, there's no such thing as a "mini camera", it's a scene camera (but I take your point that it is low resolution) rendering a cube map. The thing is it has to re-render the entire scene, or whatever layers are applicable. That takes time. Time to re-submit all scene objects, render them....and it does it SIX TIMES, the way I did it is one side of the cube map per frame, and it actually spreads it across 14 frames somehow (on the individual sides per frame setting).

So it tries to reduce the costs, but there are costs. And if your scene is inefficient, so is the reflection probe rendering.

There are other techniques, such as screen-space reflections that can basically use screenshots. But reflection probes are re-rendering. And we're in a discussion about experimenting with different techniques.

[leaden turret]

by you the scene reflections looked fine and not off / out of place when you traveled across anywhere on the map?? by me it looks like they stay in place....

[meager pelican]

They were doubled up for some reason, and not precise. But they did move somehow. Still not right though. But I haven't really played with that yet, it's my next step (see post above) after finishing the real-time test (for fun).

[leaden turret]

ahh right right yes same here, they do seem a bit overlapping/duplicated (maybe that's the blending interpolation between multiple probes at play?) and yes they kinda do slide along a bit... but it's reeeally kinda not close to satisfactory... and from certain angles it's really horribly completely wrong and off

[meager pelican]

Yeah. Right now you've got them in two columns near the center (for testing of course) but their active-area boxes are all the same and cover the entire water.

What I was going to do next was to make a "grid" of probes, say every 10 meters, low res like you have them....and have their boxes be about 20 meters large so they over lap (or maybe 15). And have them be baked probes. And then try having the player move through them.

The thing about realtime is that there's only one reflection probe at the play position. But it costs to update it. With baked, they're baked, but you chew up memory having them available even if the engine only passes one or two during any given frame.

[leaden turret]

Such a technique makes accurate reflections.
You mean the technique of to only refresh the probe if the player moves some set distance from last-known-position ? cool! def wanna test that on the low end mobile

Next thing I'll do, though, is go back to your baked probes and see if I can adjust them to not have the doubling effect and to be every X world-units apart so they don't glitch so much. 🙏 awesome! thanks! much looking forward & staying tuned for any developments about that

[meager pelican]

I mean the real-time technique. The "only update when moving" is an optimization, admittedly with only a little payoff.

[leaden turret]

right, that's another thing i didnt know about; how many probes is too many probes

[leaden turret]

ah i see ok

[meager pelican]

Maybe you can mess with them from the description and see if it gets any better. IDK, I haven't really experimented with reflections on low-end mobile, I mostly play with desktop stuff so this is a fun experiment for me and why I'm engaged.

I thought you were looking at doing some form of screen-space reflection, maybe. But if you're using the lit shaders, you'll get reflections from probes automatically as the lit shaders generate/contain that code already.

Incidentally, just as a test, since you have the metallic and smoothness at 1.0, I overrode the render queue to be opaque on the material settings, and it upped the frame rate since it didn't have to draw the ocean bottom area and then blend.

[leaden turret]

i was considering screen space at some point, but i fear the limitations of frustum angle might really make things quite fugly... it can happen fairly often that a player is looking kinda downward towards the water and not including the distant landmasses, possibly making it really jarring between yes seeing / not seeing those reflections based on how low the camera angle aims towards the water...

so at this point i limited myself to - either finding a workable solution with baked probes, or - no choice, all out planar reflection

(but 🤷‍♂️ i could still be convinced otherwise heh... if it makes sense somehow to still try screen space...)

[leaden turret]

TBH i'm always messing/playing with those numbers, hardly knowing what i'm doing and not sure i'm fully satisfied with the effect as-is in the demo project. One annoyance i've noticed is; if I turn metallic all the way up, then the reflections are more colorful which is desirable, but the sun specular reflections are totally blue tinted which i find not ideal... if i turn metallic down the sun specular is nice and white as desired, but island reflections are very washed out. i wish i had also bright white specular AND colorful water reflections of islands/landmass

but very cool to know about that optimization if indeed i dont care for deep water visibility... good do know 👌

[meager pelican]

Here's the script for driving the real-time reflection probe. No warranties, I just threw it together to test. Put it on a game object that is a child of the real time reflection probe. Set the public references properly to the camera object and set a move distance.

[leaden turret]

👍 🙌 awesome, thanks much!! will take this straight to the lab

[meager pelican]

Ooops got some message text in there at the top...lol

[leaden turret]

np

noted

i also do wanna try a bit what you described about grid of probes. Still not sure i fully understood how to do it right (how big should each probe box be / cover? and other questions) so will still be looking out for if you happen to play around with that and get any interesting results, but ye i'll be trying to play with that a bit

[meager pelican]

Yeah, the editor really screws with your timing, so always time with the stats window showing in maximized mode, so the editor window overhead doesn't mess with your data.

Also the UI scrips seem to be taking quite a bit of CPU side stuff, and the veg stuff I disabled to get it out of the metrics. Still only got about 80 FPS ish on mid-end desktop hardware, and I suspect the terrain system is part of the reason. But could be my system settings too.

[leaden turret]

aside from that i'm gonna be trying to develop further the test/demo project; a few more vegetation types (trees / grass etc), making a GameObject version of the scene, an ECS SubScenes version of the scene, each version with a 1-piece terrain mesh version of the scene and a 16x16 subdivided terrain mesh version of the scene to see if any occlusion culling makes a significant difference or not (maybe i'll try another version putting each 16x16 chunk with its vegetation in another subscene, a-la MegaCity kind of optimizations...) and a camera "on rails" sequence loop to demo various rendering conditions ex. narrow "corridors" of the map with limited visibility vs. large landscape views with long distances etc. so it can be profiled on mobile for lack of a proper mobile DOTS character controller

[meager pelican]

I'd try every 10 meters, so you'll have a grid of N x N probes, box sizes about 15 meters each so they overlap...play with that value. You know you can select them all and edit that size all at once so it isn't too bad.

[leaden turret]

ah cool right 👌

[grand jolt]

so like this

the false is the normal water texture and the output went into the base color

is this correct

[leaden turret]

@meager pelican also just to confirm - am I on the right track that it only makes sense to go Box projection? Not regular non-box-projection probes?

[grand jolt]

@karmic hatch

[meager pelican]

The proper script, no extra text

[leaden turret]

or maybe it can make sense to use non-box-projection, if each probe box is like you say a smaller 15x15 area or something...

[grand jolt]

regedit and carpefunsoftware be writing a paragraph

[leaden turret]

terrains by default start at 1000x1000, which i decided is ok to play around with for testing this game concept out (need kinda large areas etc) so if we do 10x10 probes so that's like... 100x100 probes total for the whole map?... 🤔

[meager pelican]

Mess with it. I mean, I tried it both ways, but when it was not working, you can't really tell what it SHOULD be doing.

My limited understanding is that box-projection is more applicable to indoor type of things than it is large outdoor scenes.

[grand jolt]

also should the foam be visible in the editor

[leaden turret]

right thats what i read in docs.. not sure what i was doing which made me think box projection was the way to go...

[grand jolt]

I think he got offline

[meager pelican]

@grand jolt Sorry, we should really be using a thread for all this, and much if it isn't about writing shaders, yet, it's about how stock shaders react. I'm about ready to bail out for the day.

[grand jolt]

dw it's ok

he hasn't come back anyways

[leaden turret]

(BTW not sure what you mean about timing in regards to the metallic & water specular / reflection color 🤔 )

[meager pelican]

Well do em every 100 then? I mean, it's a test.

[leaden turret]

aha ok i'll try, no idea really - maybe 100x100 probes does make sense 🤷‍♂️ truly have no clue and wondering what might be best idea to use here..

[meager pelican]

Going to bale out for the night. Catch up with you later.

[grand jolt]

I'ma ping once more just to make sure

@karmic hatch

[leaden turret]

re. terrain system; yes i was made aware that unity terrain is not most performant and especially not a good idea for mobile, which is why in fact i use this asset plugin https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/terrain/terrain-to-mesh-2021-195349 to convert the terrain to mesh with its own splatmap shaders & stuff (which had their own complications about moving variables to CBUFFER if you remember... which still dont work on mobile for some reason..) i've been starting to try messing with making terrain meshes in blender, still working on that (no success yet...)

[grand jolt]

read this

yep he's offline

in that case

[grand jolt]

anyone

[grand jolt]

this is supossed to do that but it didn't

[leaden turret]

is this about a water shader?

[grand jolt]

yes

stylized water shader

I'm trying to get the foam

[leaden turret]

which one? custom? or from the asset store

[grand jolt]

custom since I believe it's better to do stuff myself

or at least put some work into them

well it's from a tutorial

but I did it manually

[leaden turret]

ah cool, which tutorial?

[grand jolt]

lemme get it

the thing is the node this guy used doesn't exist for some reason so we had to come up with an idea to get around it

[leaden turret]

i'm kinda looking around for a good water solution for my project too, ideally performant & lightweight but with certain effects

[grand jolt]

and since it got complicated I decided to just not have foam and he told me he was gonna try to get it to work for himself and then send it

[leaden turret]

been trying to follow some tutorials myself, totally newb to shaders

[grand jolt]

so he sent it

I did it and it doesn't work because it wasn't the full thing, so I just guessed some stuff

[leaden turret]

maybe look at how some other guys do it? ex. https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/stylized-water-for-urp-162025

hey our hero is here 🤩

[karmic hatch]

you're remapping the noise to be almost exactly 0.5 at all times, the In Min Max(2) should be 0, 1 since that's the range the noise covers

[grand jolt]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJrc_ywpTJw

[grand jolt]

oh

and is the foam visible from the editor

[karmic hatch]

Should be

[grand jolt]

ok

nothing

[grand jolt]

nothing's wrong with this right?

nor this

[karmic hatch]

you don't need the clamp

My clamp was on another branch, bc i was using an exponential and didn't want it to get mad

[grand jolt]

ok

[karmic hatch]

or actually you might use it if you're using it for the color

but you don't need it for the foam

[karmic hatch]

For the gradient noise, use position <world space>.xz

[grand jolt]

ok

as the uv right?

[karmic hatch]

yes

[grand jolt]

alr

[grand jolt]

alright it did something

uh the material icon turned red-ish orange

[karmic hatch]

strange

[grand jolt]

and this happened

[karmic hatch]

for the FoamNoise&Thickness property, make sure both values are >0

[grand jolt]

wait

[grand jolt]

are not zero?

[karmic hatch]

yes

[grand jolt]

ok

it did this but it's the wrong color + it's just a line basically

[karmic hatch]

if you make the g value larger than the r value the noise should start doing its thing

[grand jolt]

what g value

[karmic hatch]

it's a vector2, it has an r and g component (x and y)

[grand jolt]

oh

so if x if bigger than y it will look randomized

[karmic hatch]

if they're different, it doesn't actually matter which is larger

[grand jolt]

almost

but the dots are stretched

[karmic hatch]

what did you put in for the UV?

[grand jolt]

is it object

[karmic hatch]

yeah you want the x,z components; this currently does xy by default but the y is vertical so it doesn't see any change

[grand jolt]

yeah but split doesn't give x and z combined

[karmic hatch]

swizzle

[grand jolt]

it gives them separately

oh

[karmic hatch]

(also there is a combine node)

[grand jolt]

oh

which one r g b or a

[karmic hatch]

just put the position into the swizzle

[grand jolt]

oh ok

[karmic hatch]

a float doesn't have a z component, that's why it's mad

[grand jolt]

but it's not white it's

green-ish(?)

[karmic hatch]

yeah currently i think you were setting it to black and then for whatever reason that gets greenified

in the branch, just lead it to a color node with white

or a float node with 1

[grand jolt]

alright I found it

the final

test

IT WORKSSSSSSSSSS

[karmic hatch]

:)

[grand jolt]

TYSM @karmic hatch

[karmic hatch]

np

good luck and good night :)

[grand jolt]

tyty

[gray quail]

trying to make a toon shader with a scribble effect on shadows. right now it uses GetMainLight().shadowAttenuation as a mask for the screen space scribble texture. what I want to do next (and where I'm stumped) is adding some noise to the shadow edge so the jaggies are not so noticeable. I want to avoid upping the shadow resolution itself. any suggestions?

[brisk epoch]

I was wondering how I could hide the backface with this shader?

[meager pelican]

Suggestions? Just off the top of my head....
Although you're doing screen-space shadows, you could distort the UV with some noise based on world-space xz location or some such. World space so that static objects would have the same distortion value every time. It would change for moving objects of course, but so does screen space.

Then there's just the scale of the textures themselves...might reduce the "jaggies".

[meager pelican]

Hmmm....
Looks like the material already renders only front faces. Can't really tell well from that image though, but the inspector panel's material settings say front face.

[grizzled bolt]

Backfaces are hidden, but if you want to make the faces not render through each other you'll have to change it from transparent to opaque

[karmic hatch]

if attenuation ranges from 0-1, you could multiply attenuation by (1-attenuation), multiply that by some noise, and then add that to your attenuation value (this way it won't de-attenuate to <1 if it's meant to be complete shadow, and it won't go >0 if it's direct light)

[regal stag]

Could use * step(0, dot(normalWS, lightDir)) (or maybe with inputs swapped) for masking these shadows too, that would help hide the jaggy parts on the side of that sphere.
Can still add some noise before the step if you don't want it straight (e.g. + 0.01 * noise). And to the shadowCoord used for sampling the shadowmap too.

[restive lava]

hey guys, i'm wondering, how would i be able to make an object be rendered directional, that is, no matter where you go the object is still in the same place, pretty much like a skybox

[grand jolt]

Hey, how would one make something in shadergraph that "stretches" a tunnel

as in the tunnel looks short from the outside but it takes longer to get through it than it seems from the outside

[grand jolt]

ok found this: https://gist.github.com/herohiralal/dcbb33fef4e61a5855ef359c9aa7c002

but what about warping a tunnel around you at the same time 🤔

like here : https://youtu.be/a7TjmtVMmLo?t=6211

[restive lava]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEB11PQ9Eo8 this is a good example

i think you could do that by adding a mesh and making the mesh a camera render of another place and if you walk in the tunnel you get seamlessly teleported to that place

but in shadergraph i don't really know a lot about shaders

[proven stirrup]

can i use Shader.Find() for Shadergraphs somehow?
if i try Shader.Find(MyShadergraph.shadergraph) it returns null

[regal stag]

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Shader.Find.html
The string passed in should be the same as it appears in the shaders dropdown on a Material. Will probably will be something like "Shader Graphs/Name"

Though as it mentions in the docs, it may be better to provide an actual reference to the shader (e.g. public Shader shader) or it might not be included in the build.

[proven stirrup]

yeah, i didnt think that i have to add the "Shader Graphs/"

with the Shader Graphs/ infront of the name it works. Thanks for the answer tho!

i added them to the always include shader list in the project settings

[hearty obsidian]

Halp, the screen position node output seems to have its y component negated when rendered via an overlay camera. Behaves fine with a base camera. Any workaround to retain the same behaviour across both types of cameras?

this is in 2021 LTS, iirc was fine with 2020 lts

[gray quail]

this worked like a charm, thank you!

[karmic hatch]

can you not just use a skybox?

[restive lava]

the reason why i wanted to use that was for a moon (i use BiRP) and the way i saw some people do it was just making a sprite move, one downside is you can go behind it, but you may think that you could just make the sprite move with you, but then the moon would render first than say a tree, and you could also say, use a lens flare but lens flares work weirdly, they disappear instantly, but i want them to be able to be seen just a little bit if you're behind a tree or something

[karmic hatch]

you could create another camera that doesn't move around, and then use that as the background

[restive lava]

could you explain it a bit more? like how to do it etc.

[karmic hatch]

I haven't done it before myself, here's a tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmCjPctKkjw&ab_channel=Unity

[tight phoenix]

'Error unexpected token 'float3' at line 1'
I am not seeing its problem, can you?

float3 works just fine in other custom node hlsls

ah there was a missing , further down the line

[tight phoenix]

trying to emulate specular and having weird results. The result looks nothing like the output of a Lit shader, its hard to describe how its not right, its just like completely lit, or lit contrary to light direction, its just wrong

the problem cannot be the code so it must be one of the inputs

what space should the world light direction and view direction be in to calculate specular?

[karmic hatch]

I think the normal has to be in world space too?

[regal stag]

Yeah, use the Transform node, Tangent to World, Direction mode

[tight phoenix]

👌 That's looking right now

first time using world space normals

hmm interesting

there is a difference between when I built it from nodes vs. when I did it from a single custom node

The custom one must be right since its the original code

but as far as I can tell I didnt make any mistakes in the non-custom one

ah wait I think I found it

Yeah fixed it, the mistake was normal got used twice but I only set it to world space on one of them, not both of them

[open quarry]

does anyone have any examples of modifying the normal buffer in AFterOpaqueDepthAndNormal?
whenever i try to do it, it just returns a solid white texture

[tight phoenix]

texture proccessing question:

• Noise looks real nice for making a procedural texture
• The same noise however makes for a normal map full of very hard edges

Is there a way to like, lightly blur it to reduce the intensity of those edges?

[karmic hatch]

Inigo Quilez has some stuff on smooth voronoi noise

@tight phoenix

[tight phoenix]

👀 yeah I think it is primarily the voronoi thats introducing these edges, Ill google check that out
https://iquilezles.org/articles/smoothvoronoi/ 👍

[tight phoenix]

What is a Hash2f 🤔 I tried googling it but no dice

source: Inigo Quilez's smooth voronoi

google only has 8 results for hash2f and none are shader related

[regal stag]

I believe it's a function returning a random vector. Can see IQ's implementation in the shadertoy example : https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ldB3zc

vec2  hash2( vec2  p ) { p = vec2( dot(p,vec2(127.1,311.7)), dot(p,vec2(269.5,183.3)) ); return fract(sin(p)*43758.5453); }

[tight phoenix]

Oooh you're right you're right

that made it click in my brain I have it (renamed) in another custom voronoi based on IQ's work

[regal stag]

Yeah that's the method Unity uses in their Voronoi node. Either will likely work

[tropic sluice]

Does anyone know how I would go about a planar projection of a texture onto another object so that it's written into it's render texture? I know it's possible to raycast onto an object and then draw a sprite at the hits UV coordinate, but that means it's dependent on the UV mapping... so it would be different sizes depending how the object has been UV mapped... I'm looking for a way to do the same but within world space to keep the sizing consistent between objects

[meager pelican]

OK, not sure I understood that. Let me spit it back at you and see if I get it right:

1. You're doing some type of (probably triplanar) mapping of a texture onto an object.
2. you want to raycast and get a "hit" location, and figure out how that location maps to the uv space of some render texture that you then wish to update?
3. but you're concerned about size somehow, and want it based on world space?

[tropic sluice]

Sorry, I'm really struggling to describe it myself.

But yes I think so.

So I'm after what you might get in Blender when you're painting, or Substance Painter

Right now I have a version that raycasts, gives me the UV of the hit, I feed that into a shader

[meager pelican]

Right! You want to "paint" (or whatever) onto an object.

[tropic sluice]

And I draw a sprite there, but if I try it across two different objects

Then the size changes, so I assume this is where it needs to be in world space, or something like that

Exactly

I want to be able to paint across two objects keeping the size consistent

[meager pelican]

Please excuse this question, but why would you draw it on two different objects?

[tropic sluice]

If there is one object in the world, you might want to paint on that... then walk around a bit and paint on something else

Or maybe it's a modular level and you want to paint across modular sections

I already spent a couple of years working on a paint system, and I model everything with all it's issues in mind

But I'm basically trying to refine it so it's less dependent on how objects are UV mapped

So I can just use whatever objects I like

[meager pelican]

Let's say we have one 1-meter cube, two 2-meter spheres and three 3-meter capsules in "our world".
You want to be able to apply your paint decal and not have it change size?

And further

You want to set a modular template for all capsules?

[tropic sluice]

Sort of a decal, I need it written into the render texture that's on the object

But yes not changing size is the aim here

As you can see from the link I sent I already have a pretty robust paint system but if two objects are UV mapped differently it results in different sizes

[meager pelican]

hmmmm

If you didn't have to "stamp" it onto other objects, the answer is easy, as you know. You have unique render textures for each object.

Nice link/vid BTW 🙂

[tropic sluice]

This is really hard to talk about.. I think that's half the problem, thanks

So the easiest way to really describe it is imagine if you had a projector

You load an image into it

[meager pelican]

So you're thinking you want to translate object1-uv-space to world space, and then world-space to object2-uv-space if it fits at all.

[tropic sluice]

You fire it at an object, or even two... and however the image lands on the object, I want that to be written into the texture

I think so yes

But I'm just struggling to fully comprehend whats involved\

[meager pelican]

OK.
But can each object have its own unique uv-mapped render texture to write into?

[tropic sluice]

Yup

So in the video I sent there are actually two walls, theyre basically just quads, theyre side by side... and because they have the same UV maps, it works

WIth some trickery

But I'm wondering if there's a way I can do it across objects when the UV mapping isn't identicle

The wall in the video is actually 3 walls wide, with a render texture for each

[meager pelican]

OK, one more question (at least).
Let's say we're projecting onto a screen-space sphere. What happens to the "backside" of the sphere that isn't visible? So I "splat" a bullet hole at some sphere and it hits at the side relative to the view direction, so only 1/2 the bullet hole actually shows. What should the render texture contain? See? Did the paint "miss" or did it wrap around the undrawn back side? Or is this not an issue?

[tropic sluice]

I basically don't care about the back side

Because it's just not a concern

[meager pelican]

OK, so you only have to map to visible areas

at the moment.

[tropic sluice]

Like in the video, those are just planes, they don't even have a back face

[meager pelican]

Fine.

Just checking

[tropic sluice]

And you can't get behind the walls

[meager pelican]

UV's are already size relative.

BUT....you need to know on a pixel by pixel basis, what the UV value is regardless of size.

IDK if I'm making sense, let's see.

If I had a projector and it projected a "star" onto a wall, and another one onto another wall that is beside it but bigger.

[tropic sluice]

That's where I'm at, I think I'm a little too stupid to comprehend whats involved

[meager pelican]

You don't want to have the same UV coordinates....and you wouldn't if you can somehow take the projection and map that to world-space UV results. Which is what you were asking to start with and now I'm getting it.

Do you by chance use a color index scheme, or are you using all three rgb channels to hold color?

[tropic sluice]

I'm using channels

So they're not set colours (indexed)

Does that make a big difference?

[meager pelican]

I was trying to cheat.
If you could free up two channels to store the uv values that ended up being used as it was interpolated across each polygon, you could get at them easier. Each pixel would know it's UV value ON READ.

If you project onto a "wall" whatever pixels you had projected onto would "know" their own uv's.

[tight phoenix]

Question, I have this dark spot in my height map, you can see its quite rounded.
I'd like it to be more steeply deep, but I havent been able to figure out how to multiply the values just in that specific range without affecting the steepness of the rest of the overall height map

[meager pelican]

Nah, there's other ways, just checking if I'd get lucky.

[tight phoenix]

you can see in its hight map its pretty flat

[tropic sluice]

Sorry for being slow, still here, just thinking

[meager pelican]

NP, me too. I'm thinking about how we do it when we know the geometry because it is stored in a buffer for the shader to access. Let me think for a bit. AFK.

[tropic sluice]

Okay 🙂

[meager pelican]

@tropic sluiceOK, I'm the one that's slow. 😉
So I THINK you're already doing what you need to do. By that I mean:

How are you, now, casing your ray such that you decide on where to paint? I mean, with just one wall?

Somehow, you're projecting a ray onto a wall and calculating where to splat, right? And updating a render texture. Just one wall....

[tropic sluice]

Yes

[meager pelican]

And if that one wall happens to be a "small wall" it works. And if that one wall happens to be a "big wall" it works.

[tropic sluice]

I just use Physics.Raycast, the RaycastHit gives me a UV coordinate, I then have a custom shader that I use with Graphics.Blit to draw a sprite at that UV coordinate

I feed the UV coordinate of the hit into the material I use to blit

And also the distance of the raycast which I use to scale how big the splat is

But it means very little because it's dependent on the UV map scale at the end of the day

And yes if the walls have difference scaled UV maps, the splat is of an inconsistent size

[meager pelican]

Ha!
you can go backwards from that.

[tropic sluice]

Because it's drawn in UV space

That's exactly what I'm wondering

I can't work out how to do inverse UV space conversions and such

[meager pelican]

You want UV-Space to world-space (which is exactly what you asked, I'm just dense).

[meager pelican]

So Like I said here ^^

[tropic sluice]

Yeah that sounds about right to me

But I think I'm stretching my poor brain a bit too much 😉

[meager pelican]

This crap is never considered "easy", just "experienced".

It's sounding more and more like a world-space projector to me.

[tropic sluice]

Yes

So if you've seen the projector thing in Unity... I basically want something like that which can actually write what it's projecting into the target objects render texture

[meager pelican]

Now if I knew off the top of my head the formula, we'd be all set. But I don't. Others might.

The thing is, you basically need to rasterize your bounding box if you can get it in world space, by the UV values, and map that rasterization to world-space interpolation onto another object probably regardless of orientation.

It might just be adjusting 2D height/width ratios. Come to think of it.

If I paint a splat onto a 1x1 wall, and then want to copy it to a 2x2 wall, I've got to cut the uv's in half and then locate an orientation/offset point.

newUV.x = rt1.width/rt2.width * spat.uv.x + spatUVOffset.x;
newUV.y = rt1.height/rt2.height * spat.uv.y + spatUVOffset.y;```

Of course you'd pre-calc with width/height stuff so as to not do it every time.

[tropic sluice]

I guess but the whole uvmap couldnt vary in density

Imagine how you UV map things, some areas take up more of the UV space

So the scaling might even vary across the UV map. nevermind between two different uv maps

That make sense?

[meager pelican]

Yeah, OK, so you need it to adjust to the new-uv-map however it is mapped.

So we're back to "how do you do it for wall 1"?
Can you "just" ray cast to wall 2 and get UV info? no? I mean, if you spat a circle onto wall 1, you can hit several triangles in one spat, and they could be uv mapped anywhere, right?

[tropic sluice]

Yes the raycasts give you back a UV coordinate

[meager pelican]

Do you basically ray-cast each pixel?

[tropic sluice]

Yes they could be uv mapped in any crazy way

So most of my objects are actually perfect squares, ie, they match uv space perfectly 😉

No crazy stuff

No I raycast once, feed that into a shader, and then I turn every pixel that's within a certain range of that UV location white

it draws a circle

If raycasting were performant that would definitely be an option

But it's a lot of pixels and a lot of raycasts 😉

[meager pelican]

But if you cross a triangle boundary, the uv maps COULD be split anywhere in the texture, conceptually, although they'd share at least one point.

[tropic sluice]

Exactly yes

That's one issue

Or maybe the UV mapping is distorted

[meager pelican]

BBIAB, AFK for a min

[tropic sluice]

So you paint, it gets drawn onto the uvmap as a perfect circle if you're actually looking at it in uv space, but once it's mapped onto the object it's distorted

I think it's because I need to draw somehow from within world space, and then transform it so that it fits into the UV space

[meager pelican]

This is for wall 1. Only one wall. Right?

[tropic sluice]

If I could work out how to do it with one, I'd spend time working out how to do it to two later 😉

[meager pelican]

OK, I thought it was already working on wall 1, and you "just" had a problem with wall 2.

[tropic sluice]

Nope, that game is done.. it works

But it has the limitation that my objects basically have to be square planes

If you think of it like this... I'm casting a ray, it gives me a UV coord, I open up the texture and draw a perfect circle.... But if the uvmapping is all wonky, it wont look like a circle back in the world

I need to be able to project from world space, and convert it into the UV space so its wonky in the wonky uv space

Rather than the other way around

If you go into blender for example, and have your cat do the uv mapping of an object for you...

And then try to paint on it, it'll see look kind of okay

[meager pelican]

Right, that's what I'm worried about.
But can't you "rig the system"? In other workds, no weird UV mapping allowed?

But OK, let's project it into non-wonky uv space. By that I mean since we have a render texture of known size that we write into, and we know world space locations of ray hits...

[tropic sluice]

It'll look silly in the uv map view though

[meager pelican]

I mean, you're talking about rectangles, right?

Always rectangles that you paint?

[tropic sluice]

Currently I only know the world space location of the single ray hit

squares

[meager pelican]

OK, squares.

But that's all you need I think for non-wonky-uv-space

[tropic sluice]

Squares map perfectly to uv space 🙂

[meager pelican]

So do rectangles.

But no matter.

We know the world-space locations of the corners of the quad.
We know the ray-hit location. We know the spalt size.

Yes?

[tropic sluice]

Yes

[meager pelican]

Non-wonky UV space is "just" the % across the quad in each direction.

So let's say we use UV set 4 for non-wonky uv space.

UV0 can still be whatever it is for texturing base albedo.

[tropic sluice]

ok

I'll make a little video of exactly what I'm getting at, few mins

[meager pelican]

So the quad's uv locations range from
x-start-WS at UV.x=0 to x-end-WS at uv=1
And similar for y.

And the splat is somewhere in the middle of all that, conceptually.
So the spat uv for the center is
uv.x = (splat-WS.x - quad-start-WS.x)/quad-width-WS

uv.y = (splat-WS.y - quad-start-WS.y)/quad-height-WS

[tropic sluice]

https://gfycat.com/SpitefulSimplisticEgg

This basically demonstrates what I'm doing wrong vs what I want to do

And yes the UV map is intentionally very wonky 😉

What I'm currently doing is like when I draw into the UV map

What I want to do is like when I draw onto the 3D object

[meager pelican]

I see.

OK, the thing is that raycast.rayhit is done on the C# side, right?

Then you pass it into the shader

[tropic sluice]

Correct

Yes using setfloat

[meager pelican]

OK, the C# side knows the whole mesh, and there's a c++ routine backing the function call, that is basically going through all the mesh data, figuring out what polygon the ray hit, and then knowing all 3 verts, it calculates where the UV's for that polygon were hit by the ray.

[tropic sluice]

ok

so you can get the uv coordinates for that polygon?

where those vertices lay in uv space?

[meager pelican]

Yeah, there are ray-triangle intersection tests....

If you want to wamp through the mesh on the C# side

But oy...

[tropic sluice]

Sounds like it could be slow

[meager pelican]

yeah.

But IDK why you want to do that. Just use another non-wonky uv set, like uv4

No wonky, no problemy

Assuming you're drawing on flat planes

[tropic sluice]

I think you have a point, maybe it will sink in soon

So it's basically just use another uvmap for paint only

[meager pelican]

Winner winner chicken dinner!

So let UV0 be the normal texturing, no paint. UV4 be the paint uvs

[tropic sluice]

So I have artists that just do whatever the hell they want

Then I go create a really simple planar uvpmap or something

[meager pelican]

Yeah

[tropic sluice]

In the other UV slot and use that

[meager pelican]

🙂

[tropic sluice]

That makes a lot of sense

[meager pelican]

But you'll still have "challenges" if it's not planar objects. But for walls, or flat stuff, no problem.

There's probably other ways, storing decals instead. So you're painting on some invisible quad that gets projected onto the non-planar object, and you'd have to distort the paint to map back to the quad, and IDK how to do that exactly.

But for planes/quads no problem.

[tropic sluice]

Yeah I like the idea that things distort if you're not painting head on

It distorts from the spray cans perspective

Because that's how it would work if you were doing it in real life

But it's not the end of the world

As a trade off for a much simpler soluation

[meager pelican]

Well, again, I'm confused as to if we're talking about planes-only or not

Because if not...decal system should be thoroughly investigated.

Using projection.

[tropic sluice]

im still trying to work out the requirements

but basically planar projection should suffice

i think your idea of just doing a planar projection uv map is a good one

what blender and substance can do is very cool, and required because people are painting to non-planar objects a lot

most of my objects side of a train, a wall, etc

so some aren't truly planar, but they're near enough it wont matter

@meager pelican thanks for all your help

[meager pelican]

Yep, or you drive it all from C#, mostly. And then just "paint the result" using a shader.

Glad to help (and I hope I didn't confuse it).

[serene creek]

Hello, how can I use more than 16 sampler2D slots in my shader?
Thanks for any help!

[kind juniper]

Why would you need that many textures?🤔

Or rather samplers.

[serene creek]

Custom shader with different configurations, usually not all of them are active at the same time but the compiler still throw errors I guess when compiling all variants

[kind juniper]

What are the textures for? Can you not use a texture array instead?

Or an atlas with multiple textures in one.

[serene creek]

Has 3 albedo, 3 normal, 2 metallic and 1 occlussion, 1 emission, 1 parallax, 1 height, 1 cutoff, 1 SSS, and some other slots for Special effects like wetness, snow, dissolve, etc

I can't use an atlas because some textures are already 8k textures needed for a high end human skin render

[kind juniper]

Albedo could be put in one texture array

And normals

[serene creek]

WOuld you help me understand the concept of texture array?

[kind juniper]

But really, it feels like you're putting too much work on 1 shader.

[kind juniper]

What exactly do you need help understanding about them? It's an array of textures, I'm not sure how to put it more simple that that.😅

[serene creek]

yeah but I know there are limitations from what I am reading because the GPU sees them as a single object

Im concerned they all need to have the exact same attributes

not all albedo are 8k textures

they also need to be able to set independently at runtime, not sure if this is a limitation

Im also concerned a texture array has the same source, meaning if I have x4 8k textures into an array that would be a 16k texture and is not supported I think

Anyhow, because I dont think textureArrays are an option and going back to the original question, forgetting the reason of why I need it, Is there any way I can I use more than 16 sampler2D sots?

[kind juniper]

They are of the same size, yes. But you could sample only within the bounds of the actual texture size(handle that in the shader).
You can set them at runtime.
And I don't think Tex array size is calculated as a sum of its texture elements.

[kind juniper]

I guess you could reuse the same sampler for a few textures if you really wanted. Check the docs page on samplers.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-SamplerStates.html

[serene creek]

Thanks, I will take a look!

[tight phoenix]

Im having trouble remapping a very shallow range of values into a deep spike of values

the plateau is so samey that using stuff like power exponents isnt working

it keeps turning into a punch out

discord bot wont allow me to post a gif because apparently its explicit

the whole thing gets pushed in instead of gradiently pushed in

[wanton grove]

Why is my compute shader creating a bunch of memory use with repeated uses when recreating a buffer everytime I use it? I release the buffer and I don't think theres anything referencing it so why it the memory adding up?

[kind juniper]

How do you know that the memory is adding up? Are you looking at the memory profiler or something?

[wanton grove]

Task manager

Also this is in the editor

[kind juniper]

How do you know that it's the compute buffer then?😅

[wanton grove]

Because I release it as soon as I'm done with it

Oh sry

[kind juniper]

Just a note, but compute buffer is allocating VRAM. Not RAM.

[wanton grove]

Because I temporarily disabled it and it worked

[kind juniper]

What worked?

[wanton grove]

I constructed the compute buffer only once, but then my mesh wouldn't modify even if I re-set it to the shader.

I also tried using set data to clear it each time but that didn't work either

[kind juniper]

In your task manager are you looking at RAM or VRAM?

[wanton grove]

Im looking at the tab that says memory

[kind juniper]

That's RAM. So it's likely something else in your code that keeps on allocating

Also, you should probably use the profiler instead of task manager

[wanton grove]

ok

Let me see if I can find any other references to the buffer

[kind juniper]

It's not the buffer...😅

[wanton grove]

Oh, ok

Could it be because I'm setting buffers/textures over and over again?

(not creating them, the SetBuffer() function)

[kind juniper]

No. Although I'm not sure how you're doing it... It's something on the CPU side.

Need to see your code to tell for sure.

[wanton grove]

Ok, I have two potential culprits, I'll send them really quick.

Also any general pointers for how to optimize this would be nice too cause I don't know how compute shaders work to well, specifically managing the buffers and stuff

[kind juniper]

Check #854851968446365696 on how to share code

[wanton grove]

Ok one sec

https://gdl.space/amocesovuw.cs

https://gdl.space/fufasorasi.cs

First one is used at runtime aswell, second one is just editor.

The Bulge function is what causes it over time when I try to raycast it through the editor script

[tight phoenix]

I got double specular working thanks to your code - the mesh itself is using Unity's real Lit, while the heightmap 'resin' has its own simulated specular

[kind juniper]

Try setting filter shared mesh instead of mesh. Also, have a look at the memory module of the profiler to see what eats the memory.

[wanton grove]

ok, one sec

[kind juniper]

Check this for more details on mesh/sharedMesh and why it might be "leaking" memory for you.

It is your responsibility to destroy the automatically instantiated mesh when the game object is being destroyed. Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets also destroys the mesh but it is usually only called when loading a new level.

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MeshFilter-mesh.html

[wanton grove]

Ok, here's what I got

I think the memory buildup was slower this time

[kind juniper]

You should be able to see what exactly is occupying how much memory. I think it was supposed to be in the profiler Memory module details. There's also a dedicated memory profiler, although it needs to be installed via the package manager.

[kind juniper]

I don't see any buildup at all in that graph.😅

[wanton grove]

Interesting, my task manager still says 84% even now

[kind juniper]

That could be from before the changes. Did you restart the editor?

[wanton grove]

I'm in the detailed part of the memory profiler and I'm looking for it now

[wanton grove]

no

[kind juniper]

Then you still have the leaked meshes in memory.🤷‍♂️

[wanton grove]

So it's meshes?

[kind juniper]

Most likely

[wanton grove]

I do call new Mesh() quite a bit I think

but nothing references it

[kind juniper]

Did you read my message about mesh/shared mesh?