for anyone not familiar, UE4 has a way more developed graph tool for shaders/materials
#archived-shaders
orchid peak
rustic dragon
and the one I am on now, but the teams are generally like 50 to 70 I think, smallish
devout quarry
what do you find the most lacking in shader graph compared to unreal's material editor?
rustic dragon
@devout quarry not much really, some reroute nodes are good, the subgraphs are a bit easier to manage
grand sun
ue4 also has blueprints which is super helpful for tech artists.. i'm confortable with them but with unity its a lot of programming
rustic dragon
yeah, I hope unity's visual scripter is good, but I heard it's only for DOTS
grand sun
it will be a few years off from what i've heard
rustic dragon
@devout quarry one big thing that doesn't work with unity is using materials for UI, they don't render with the Screen Overlay method, you have to use Camera Overlay 😦
one of the thing I did was ui materials, doing things moving about, health bars, etc
grand sun
@rustic dragon what do you use for world gen ? custom tools or something specific
and sorry in advance, i question every tech artist i see nowadays 😄
rustic dragon
we are looking at houdini for that stuff, but on the last game I think they used world machine for the base and then just went in and painted terrain, placed structures, etc
orchid peak
@grand sun Visual scripting is available as an experimental build https://forum.unity.com/threads/dots-visual-scripting-4th-experimental-drop.749273/
grand sun
oh so it sped up!
rustic dragon
custom tools are hard to come by for smaller or smallish teams
and honestly I am a fan of using as vanilla of an engine as possible, middleware and tools are hard to maintain 😮
grand sun
last i heard from the peeps at unity, it was quite some while off
orchid peak
yeah, I still wouldn't expect it for years. DOTS only would also be kinda odd
devout quarry
I do think it is DOTS only
regal stag
@rustic dragon I seem to be able to use materials on UI in Screen space overlay fine in URP, unless you mean it doesn't work in other pipelines?
rustic dragon
I don't have URP yet, using LWRP in the latest, my experience is they just come out black
maybe it's fixed, or yeah, user error on my part
regal stag
Ah okay yeah
rustic dragon
In order to make your Shader Graph render correctly in Screen Space-Overlay mode, you will need to set the blend settings as they are in the Default UI shader. As of this writing, Unlit Shader Graphs set Blend at the Pass level: Blend One Zero, One Zero. We need it at the SubShader level: Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha. (See line 49 in the code below.)
so yeah, I guess you can fiddle with stuff
@crimson stone nice
crimson stone
thanks for your help anyway
rustic dragon
I tried that node too, so there were no other tweaks?
devout quarry
emission node?
regal stag
I think I had emission working without the use of that node, but if it's fixed that's good
HDRP thing
devout quarry
ah
grand sun
Should i frac _Time so over time the value doesnt get too huge? or wont make a difference?
rustic dragon
isn't frac to make something repeat from 0 to 1, no matter the increasing value?
regal stag
Yeah, frac(_Time) will cause the value to loop. It returns the fractional part of the number, so when it reaches 1 it drops back down to 0.
grand sun
yeah which is normally all i would need if im offsetting something in 0 - 1 space
low lichen
@grand sun I think it'll take some days before _Time.y becomes less precise.
rustic dragon
not really, if you want 0 to 8 to be in 0 to 1 space, use Remap
grand sun
oh i totally forgot about the _Time channels 😄
low lichen
The faster channels will obviously become bigger faster so less precise faster.
low lichen
Well, it'll become less precise the bigger the number. What I meant was it'll take some days before it's noticable.
grand sun
doing frac on _Time kinda gives you a rainbow haha ||https://gyazo.com/b60188964bdec77b2e137e3e21f18750||
regal stag
Pretty 😄
regal stag
_Time is a float4
regal stag
I'd probably just keep a float variable around until the final output, if you do any more operations on a float4 it's going to be more expensive than just a float... right?
grand sun
thaats true, i was just doing this as a test ^^
rustic dragon
what are you trying to do?
grand sun
just playing around with things at the moment
but making a shader for tubes/pipes that offsets vertices in a cartoon buldge effect
rustic dragon
heh, nice
love doing that kind of stuff, especially messing with vert offsets
https://vimeo.com/256240586 here is a spring that doesn't stretch, it the thickness doesn't change
grand sun
im just thinking about the best way to get it to scroll along the UV that might have a tiling texture
without the bulge tiling several times along the mesh
rustic dragon
yeah, if you can control the UV's so even a bending pipe is straight on the UV's and they go seamlessly on down (even extend past 0 or 1, just use UV2), it should be good
grand sun
yeah i just wonder then because it would extend past 0-1
and the bulge offset would expand past that meaning it would tile twice+
🤔
rustic dragon
you can sample UV's past 0 to 1
and if you don't do any looping past 0 or 1, you should be good
like for that spring, the links around go up pretty high, I don't think it's necessary honestly, but at that time I figured more fidelity to the values would help
grand sun
ah yeah
regal stag
Having UVs beyond 0 to 1 might make texturing harder though, if certain parts need to be textured differently.
rustic dragon
UV2, not UV1, it's basically a data set
regal stag
Ah right
rustic dragon
https://vimeo.com/248862524 this one really required a few UV set tweaks
grand sun
if uv1 has nothing, what exactly is the info thats in there?
rustic dragon
it has 4 floats of value
though I don't know how you'd edit the 3rd and 4th one in a 3d Package
wait, maybe it's just a V2
so you can store anything really, and access them in the shader to do cool stuff, I made a fortnite wall building system with that technique
regal stag
The UV nodes in shadergraph output float4s. I would assume it's the same for code.
rustic dragon
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Mesh-uv.html yeah, I thought so too, but there's this for the mesh
devout quarry
@rustic dragon
rustic dragon
yo
rustic dragon
ah nice
https://vimeo.com/290457079 here is mine, basically takes objects you add to the 'grid' and then you do some settings for how it comes and goes, gravity faking, etc, then it comes all of those gameobjects into a single mesh and bakes the UV's and stuff
devout quarry
looks clean!
grand sun
oh yeah i saw the same with vertex colours
devout quarry
I like it
grand sun
but vertex colours are quite a nice place to put a lot of other data in
rustic dragon
yeah, I didn't want to overwrite any vertex colors, so I just added uv channels to hold the data, just in case the user was using vert colors
grand sun
i know in the talk for fortnite they say said they did some special stuff to include the data into each of the individual meshes, i wonder if all it really was was the second uv channel haha
low lichen
There are 3 extra uv channels to play with
rustic dragon
well the idea is to make a single wall a single mesh, then with the UV's or vert colors make it 'animate' coming together or being destroyed, the main flaw is the collision doesn't change with the visuals
grand sun
but for gameplays sake, thats actually better
rustic dragon
@low lichen actually it's 7 extra now
for sure, but if you wanted to do something that you might be able to interact with, it'd be trouble
low lichen
@rustic dragon Ooh, cool!
grand sun
guess you would do a different solution all together then haha
rustic dragon
speedtree uses all 8 of the UV channels, very bloated and expensive assets 😮
rustic dragon
wind and rustling
rustic dragon
to really layer it, not really, but 8 is excessive
devout quarry
@rustic dragon have you worked with any really big shader graphs?
with lots of properties
I'm talking maybe 40+ properties at least
grand sun
would you want to?
rustic dragon
the idea is you want the trunk to bend in one way, the big branches in another, smaller branches to the actual leaves in the wind
grand sun
😂
rustic dragon
@devout quarry I have, character customization got quite silly after a while
grand sun
ah you're right i guess
devout quarry
how was performance for you?
rustic dragon
but beyond parameters, a lot of spaghetti graphs for sure 🙂
rustic dragon
parameters area actually quite costly we found out late in the project 😮
devout quarry
ah damn
rustic dragon
yeah, each instance of the material gets it's own values, so that had to be stored/streamed/destroyed
devout quarry
tradeoff between performance and usability then I guess
rustic dragon
yeah, it's a fight
devout quarry
ah alright but if it's for 1 object it should be all right?
grand sun
i guess not if that 1 object takes up all your budget
rustic dragon
yeah, the idea is you really put a lot of work optimizing into the objects you have a lot of in one scene, special one offs can be nice and detailed
devout quarry
yeah that's good way to think about it
rustic dragon
that can happen, but it's mostly the 5000 friggin' rocks, even collision starts to add up due to the instances
devout quarry
I really am writing all these tips down by the way haha
rustic dragon
🙂
grand sun
but rocks rock
rustic dragon
they roll too
low lichen
Also, shader complexity is usually in the pixel shader, so it doesn't matter how many objects use that shader, it matters how many pixels on screen are drawn with that shader.
rustic dragon
yeah, overdraw from the mesh is a worse offender
but generally shader cost hasn't gotten to be an issue, the terrain is one that can get up there and it covers a lot of the screen
low lichen
Overdraw and shader complexity has been something I've been having to optimize a lot for a mobile VR game.
rustic dragon
add to that decals, grass and particles, it can be a render mess
yeah, do you do LODs on the meshes @low lichen ?
grand sun
like how grass in breath of the wild tanks the frame rate
rustic dragon
not sure with memory mobile can afford them
low lichen
@rustic dragon No, but it's a small area you're in. Usually never any object over 15 meters away from you.
grand sun
can you get away with using LODS in mobile games? usually the fixed camera angle would cull a lot i guess?
rustic dragon
@grand sun grass is hard to deal with, it's mostly the draw distance that takes the punishment, so you have to resort to tricks to not get a bald hill 100 feet from you
rustic dragon
yeah, LODs are really only for 3D games, they help with tri counts, and on skinned meshes, they reduce the amount of skinned verts
grand sun
i love unreals LOD maker
rustic dragon
yes, it's great, better than Simplygon 💩
unity really needs to invest in some LOD systems, including HLOD
grand sun
question now.. im just gonna use a texture input for the scrolling vertex offset
ah nevermind
gonna try something first 😄
low lichen
@grand sun You mean like a heightmap?
low lichen
Yeah. tex2Dlod is necessary because you have to specify which mip map level you want.
grand sun
got a headache trying to figure this out
so funny when i know how to do this with visual shader editors but in code its harder 😂
rustic dragon
cheat, mock it up in a visual editor then see what it does in code
grand sun
ahha yeah 😄
devout quarry
is making shaders with a visual editor generally seen as a 'easier' or a 'lesser form' or making shaders
low lichen
Certainly easier to learn because you don't need to learn the basics of programming and the special shader language syntax.
I don't think easier means it's a lesser form of making shaders
devout quarry
For me it does feel like a bit easier yeah, not so much because of the syntax but because of the visual component, I've always been a very visual learner and it helps me to see things layed out in a graph
low lichen
Being able to see a preview at each step is very nice. But I still prefer writing shaders, because it feels less limiting and it's something I'm used to.
charred depot
how would i go about making stars sloat towards the front of a object, like passing through space?
low lichen
@charred depot Are you looking to do this in one shader pass or are you open to using particle systems?
charred depot
would i be able to do this in a particle system tho? ive seen it done only in shaders
low lichen
What about the effect makes it impossible to do in a particle system?
charred depot
i didnt explain it too well, basically want a black background and stars going forward and then disappearing, iits going to be on a flat object
grand sun
can anyone help me figure out what i've done wrong that is making the offset only work on half of the mesh o.O
very confused
red line is roughly the origin
ah i guess its because i just took the x channel of the tex2Dlod? fixed!
fervent tinsel
re: LODs
Unity does have this experimental thing https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/AutoLOD
but there's no real info if that's something they'll go further with
it supports old Unity Simplygon plugin too
rustic dragon
nice
orchid peak
@devout quarry it is definitely easier, but it's not so much "lesser" as in that it can be a different role (on larger teams). I've done a ton of shader writing but for simple things I prefer graph editors, since shaders are visual anyways so seeing step by step just makes it faster
noble cave
I'm looking for some help with a shadergraph i've made.
I'm trying to change vertex position but am unable to put a vector 3 as the input for vertex position.
I have a feeling it has to do with getting one of the values from an rgb, but that shouldn't matter should it?
rustic dragon
yeah
noble cave
and if so how can i make the red value ~= 1 become an x value ~= 1?
rustic dragon
I replicated the issue and that's what it is, use this as your sampler
instead of the other one
noble cave
ah ty
left pivot
Hey I was wondering if anyone help me with my confusion. Let's say I have a colour, if I multiply it with a Vector1 (min 0, max 1) what happens to colour? Second question is, if I add 2 colours together what happens? Are they blend in? Little bit confused.
vocal narwhal
a.rgba * b, it multiplies all the components by b. a.rgba + b.rgba, it adds the matching components together
regal stag
Colours are just 4 float values, so adding them will simply add each component together. If you want to blend between colours you should look into a Lerp.
left pivot
since last week I couldn't get colors blend right. I am trying to blend shadows with a color, light parts with a color. I tried, add, multiply, blend, lerp. Maybe I am doing something wrong. Let me try Lerp again.
I wonder am I stupid or something 😄
this is a modified version of blog post's lighting model.
currently LightColor and DarkColor change color of same region.
and I am losing shaded parts all together.
regal stag
If you want to apply colours to the light/dark areas, it might be easier to have a single Lerp, where A is the LightColor, B is the DarkColor, and T is the NdotL Smoothstep output.
left pivot
switching A as Dark, B as Light works correctly. Still it still takes so much from shadows blackness but yeah It's something like that.
thank you
again @regal stag
regal stag
If you want it darker, adjust the DarkColor to be darker
Or you could then multiply the lerp output by the smoothstep. @left pivot
elfin quartz
So, I have a question about implementing point light attenuation. I'm basically extending the Standard shader to do a muzzle flash effect on the environment when the player shoots (to avoid more realtime lights).
I'm doing this by simulating a simple version of a point light from the player position when they shoot.
However, I can't seem to get it to work correctly. It doesnt light up at all on the floor below me, only walls. They both use the same shader.
And the attenuation seems completely off, I cant figure out how to implement radius. Could anyone take a look? Shader link : https://pastebin.com/MuUadxjS
Video of how it looks
Point Light Standard Shader
regal stag
@left pivot Yeah. It should look something like this, if that's what you want. I'm not doing a smoothstep so might look slightly different, just using the value straight from the saturate before it.
If the smoothstep is still not dark enough, try the Saturate output instead
left pivot
Well someone here help me with that smoothstep and one minus to get shadows and highlights separately. I can try this.
smoothstep multiplying get it too darker 😄
let me try this one.
well this is better on darker areas but It also slightly changes highlight areas.
I can fiddle with it further I guess.
native garnet
Whats the difference between albedo and albedo smoothness?
From what I understand, albedo is the base map, the color of the vertex
low lichen
@native garnet What's the context? Is this something related to Shader Graph?
native garnet
Yes
Also, I don't understand why the shader graphs a differ so much, some dont have parameters for albedo/emission
amber saffron
Can you extend a bit what you see ? Are you using URP or HDRP ?
I don't see where "albedo smoothness" is.
As for the differences of the master nodes, this is expected, as "albedo" is the color of diffused from the surface, and emission is the color emited by a "luminescent" surface, those don't apply to the "unlit" master node, that only has the color that is displayed
tranquil bronze
@regal stag i dont understand why my shader isnt working
my toon shader thing
this is my project, what is going wrong ????https://github.com/bobthetreegod/Shaderland
native garnet
@amber saffron oh sorry, my bad, it's actually just smoothness and its a standard shader property. I see thanks for the explanations!
I'm using hdrp right now, and i find strange that emission doesnt contribute to lighting
low lichen
It does if you bake the lighting
native garnet
Wait the lighting must me baked?
low lichen
It can't be done in realtime unless you're doing raytracing
native garnet
What about a moving object with emissions, shouldnt that work too?
@low lichen oh damn
low lichen
It can work with realtime global illumination, but that requires a static baked environment
native garnet
I had no idea, looks like a pretty simple effect, it just multiplies the nearest vertices with the emission color I think
low lichen
I don't know how HDRP lighting differs. Maybe they have some realtime option for this.
native garnet
Btw, I am workin on a mobile game
Is it normal for the game to drop 30+ fps and gain +20 latency when using shadows?
Right now I disabled them all, with them I get horrible performance, even tho they looked awful
amber saffron
HDRP doesn't work on mobile
Or better : "not supported"
For the shadows perf drop : this is expected
For emission on materials : this is not as simple as it seems, and the best way to have dynamic lighting from those kind of objects is to fake it using a light.
Lighting objects with the emission of other ones is made through global illumination as is either :
- fully baked and static (nothing moves)
- partially dynamic : enlighten realtime GI (but is no more supported in HDRP)
- fully dynamic using realtime raytracing (NVidia card only, and obviously not on mobiles)
native garnet
@amber saffron thanks for all the explanations, and yeah i confused pbr graph with hd render pipeline, im acrually using the lwrp
grand jolt
im not sure if this belongs here
but
i have a material which becomes transparent when between the camera and player
but
I have two pieces stacked to make one wall
and i get this weird effect
is there a certain shader or a way to remove the added opaqueness
this might be more clear
low lichen
Basically, right now when the upper cube is drawn, it doesn't "realize" that the cube below it is a transparent block. It might as well be a lighter colored opaque block, so it blends its transparent pixels on top of it
grand jolt
oh i see
low lichen
There is a way to fix that though
grand jolt
hopefully not complicated
low lichen
And that is to add a depth pass to the shader. What that means is it will render the cube twice, first only writing depth and then writing the transparent pixels.
tidal rover
occlusion culling? im a bit rusty on shaders
low lichen
You can read about it a little bit here
https://forum.unity.com/threads/transparent-depth-shader-good-for-ghosts.149511/
grand jolt
ok thanks for the resource!
doesnt look like that is helping
apparently you can draw the square with a stencil buffer activated
and not draw the second one where it overlaps
you know of any resource for that>
low lichen
You can think of the stencil buffer as an extra channel, like the alpha channel, which you can write to in a shader. But it's special because you can make an object only draw on places on the screen where the stencil value is equal, greater than or less than a certain value.
The syntax for writing and comparing stencils is here:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-Stencil.html
grand jolt
ok thanks!
amber saffron
I'd suggest to just have this wall made with one cube and not two ...
willow pike
Anyone know a way I could add some noise to the edges of shadows? Trying to make shadows cast onto a flat surface look roughened like it’s being cast onto grass without using heavy grass geometry everywhere.
low lichen
@willow pike What's the context here? LWRP/HDRP? Shader Graph?
willow pike
@low lichen using URP and Shader Graph
amber saffron
You could make a custom lighting shader, but that seems overkill ...
willow pike
I’m using a top down camera that cannot be rotated. If I could just add some vertical noise to my shadows I could achieve this effect.
Yeah debating if this is worth it but would be better than covering my entire game with grass geometry. Figured that would get heavy fast.
low lichen
I'm trying to imagine if noise would look any good. Surely you'd want to displace it with some kind of grass like texture?
And you're not talking about the blades of grass that are lit and in front of the shadow, right?
willow pike
Maybe. I’m using a cel shaded flat/illustrative style. Trying not to overly texture my game.
rustic dragon
what do you mean noise, isn't that shadow warbled due to the shape of the tree compounded by the uneven ground and grass, is that what you are talking about?
willow pike
I do have some actual taller grass blades using geometry that will displace shadows but I want the entire surface to look grassy without placing the blades on every grassy surface
low lichen
@willow pike Can you post a screenshot of a grassy patch with shadow on it so we can see what look you're looking for?
rustic dragon
can your grass surface have some more geometry detail, like a grid of triangles/verts with a bit of height noise
willow pike
That might be the right solution @rustic dragon
So you can see what I mean here. There are patches of tall grass, but for example I'd like that tree's shadow to have some roughness even though it's being cast onto a completely flat surface.
rustic dragon
looking good btw, but yeah what kind of surface is that geometrically?
looks like you have some pattern of verts/tris?
willow pike
Basically treating it like an old school tiled 2D game but with cubes and some rounding around the cliffs.
amber saffron
Suggestion : use layering to have a different sprite project the shadow ?
rustic dragon
are those premade chunks?
willow pike
Well I created them but they are ideally going to be repurposeable to be able to build out the whole overworld.
low lichen
@amber saffron Sprite? I don't see any sprites in this.
grand jolt
maybe add some little divots in the tree
willow pike
Maybe some kind of plane above the ground or built into the tileable chunks with lightly displaced tris like you're saying?
grand jolt
and disable shadows casted on it
rustic dragon
ok, so you could add some detail on the surface to make it warbled a bit, I was thinking it was procedural
grand jolt
and enable it casting shadows?
amber saffron
Sorry, my bad, that tree kind of looked like a facing camera billboard.
But still, you can use what I said for meshes
willow pike
Yeah that might work. I'll try making some subtle variation on the flat surface of the tops
rustic dragon
@willow pike I think somebody above mentioned the idea of layering the ground plane a few times with other grass planes slowly increasing height, and use a material on it with alpha clip with an ever increasing clip threshold on some noise (world mapped noise) then the shadows would warble that way
willow pike
Nice! Yeah that's a great idea @rustic dragon
Thanks everyone for the help, I'll try to put something together using these ideas and post the progress
rustic dragon
good luck, and it's looking good!
willow pike
Thanks @rustic dragon forgot to update you on the grass overhangs. Just ended up using some custom texturing and messing with the UVs to vary them around corners.
rustic dragon
nice
grand jolt
how can I check if objects arent being hit by a raycastall that have been hit before? before I switched to raycastall i used raycast and kept track of the last object and when the raycast was false I did whatever
rustic dragon
kind of an interesting result, the noise I used leaves a bit of a 'grass' texture on it too 😮
are your shadows baked?
willow pike
Wow that looks awesome! @rustic dragon I love it. Very much the look we’d like.
Using real-time shadows for now but haven’t tried baking the lighting.
rustic dragon
here it is with an optional grass color variance based on height
ok, the one I used is real time too
willow pike
Wow! How would I implement this to the tops of my cliff chunks?
rustic dragon
I imagine you wouldn't want that edge height look, or would you?
willow pike
The second one looks great with the variation
rustic dragon
could be tricky on the cliffs, this is how this is set up, the drop shadows just get mipped away at a distance to get that more subtle look, not sure if that's a problem in the long run
willow pike
Ah I see. I wonder if it could just be lowered near the edge lips of the cliffs.
It might not even look bad with the top the down down perspective
rustic dragon
that is just a shader made in shader graph that uses alpha clip transparency that for each 'layer' I make the threshold go up
if you control the geometry completely, just pull the edges down on the models for that layer
only the middle parts would need to 'float' above
when modelling this a simple bevel extrude a few times would probably be enough for the different layers, map them the same way (or world mapping might be better), then apply something like this
the noise is texture driven btw, just clouds and some noise in photoshop
willow pike
Yeah totally I love this. Could even do a similar approach to make the surface of the cliffs look more distressed
rustic dragon
yeah, overdraw can be an issue with doing stuff like this, so worth a try and see how it affects performance
geometrically it's not much, texture is small (512x512)
low lichen
Overdraw shouldn't be a big problem if you draw that top to bottom with ZWrite at each step
rustic dragon
@low lichen I am using LWRP to do this, do you think he'd need to write an actual shader to do this best?
not sure if a shader graph shader has all of those things set properly
low lichen
I don't know enough about Shader Graph to answer that
Are you putting many passes into the same shader?
rustic dragon
this shader should be easily remade by hand too
not sure what you mean by many passes
it's a default PBR shader with this as the graph
willow pike
Thanks so much @rustic dragon I’m gonna give this a shot when I get back from lunch. Will probably bug you about it again later 😂
rustic dragon
sounds good
low lichen
@rustic dragon Oh, so it's just multiple mesh renderers with this shader manually stacked on top of each other?
devout quarry
I'd really like shader graph to have a 'get/set local var' like amplify has
would make organizing my graph so much better
rustic dragon
@low lichen yes
@devout quarry is that where you can have like teleporting invisible connector lines?
rustic dragon
I remember that, it would be cool, as long as you can have 'go to' type deal to help with navigation and knowledge of what is going on
low lichen
@rustic dragon In that case, just gotta hope Unity orders it properly, which it should
devout quarry
I added a relay node that's just 'Out = In' and it helps because then I can have sharp corners in connector lines
but still
rustic dragon
the lines are sometimes just easier to follow if you can pin them, which it's missing compared to unreals and I think amplify
yeah, being able to reroute lines I think is the best option
@low lichen yes, that can be a concern depending on the distance he sees them at, but you can fudge the distances to match I hope
low lichen
Doesn't URP have a special order number for renderers?
If not, you could also use render queues, if that works in URP
It looks like each layer needs its own material with that shader, though.
rustic dragon
yes
low lichen
If you connected the threshold with the Y position of the object, it could all be the same material
rustic dragon
they are at different heights
and to base it on the actual object position would be hard as the models are of different scales
could be some sets of 'heights' though where you can do that with fewer mats
low lichen
Just gotta add an offset position to define the starting position and then a multiplier for how much 1 unit of height increases the threshold
rustic dragon
yeah, I think that would work for the same height objects for sure, good idea
willow pike
Just trying this out @rustic dragon
So in your example, is each layer of grass using a different material with a different alpha clip threshold?
Or is it dynamically changing the threshold based on the object's vertical position?
low lichen
In the screenshot they took, they just had a GrassThreshold property, so a different material for each layer
But it's totally possible to have it use the vertical position like we were talking about
rustic dragon
yeah, you can try to do it based on height, but it might be more difficult if you have a lot of varied heights
so you'd need an offset property and make as many set Materials as you have different heights of cliffs
low lichen
If it's on some kind of grid, it could be repeating
willow pike
Hmm right that's what I was thinking
probably isn't an easy way to make one material do this across an entire scene
rustic dragon
how many 'heights' do you have?
low lichen
This could be done with a geometry shader, where each layer is created by the shader
rustic dragon
that would change the shadows?
low lichen
That would save design time since you won't have to manually stack renderers together and you could easily change the number of layers
rustic dragon
shadow heights that is
low lichen
Sure, as long as the shadow pass also uses the geometry shader
willow pike
At the moment it's stepped up like this, increments of 4 and 8 units I believe
rustic dragon
you could try to repeat it, or just make materials for each level, which looks to be like 4/5
willow pike
Hmm thought I was on the right track here but it doesn't seem to be working
rustic dragon
then if you expose an offset you could push each of the 4/5 materials for the height
but definitely look into what @low lichen is talking about, unless you want this to work with the shader graph, not sure you can do what he's mentioning in shader graph
low lichen
I'd be surprised if Shader Graph has geometry shader support already
rustic dragon
the clip threshold should be .5 and not changed, but I think it does require a paramter weirdly
low lichen
And if this is for mobile, then geometry shader is out
rustic dragon
I did the threshold differently, but you could use that honestly, I am silly 🙂
why use the invert colors?
willow pike
Oh wait yeah
Hmm idk I thought it was "thickening" the grass as I moved the plane up on Y and I wanted to reverse it
rustic dragon
I usually use one minus
willow pike
Ah I'm still noobing my way through Shader Graph
rustic dragon
heh
terse nexus
anything I need to consider when trying to create a shader for terrain. (shader graph)
terse nexus
Cause I added my shader (one I usually use for objects) to it. Which lead to overwritting/ignoring the painted textures
willow pike
@rustic dragon Only using one layer of noise for now but it's already giving the effect I want, really happy with the way the shadows of the player and tree are hitting the grass. And it's a nice bonus that it looks like grass is growing up around the crates, cliff edges and player's feet 🙂
willow pike
Not at all, was struggling to get the multiple layers that change based on height, but after I gave up I just tried a single layer and really liked the look
Thanks, used a noise node instead of the texture so I could control the detailing. Works pretty well.
rustic dragon
how are you handling the edges?
so the reason I used more of a macro noise texture was to get that warbling on the shadow edges
I would try a bit of that too, maybe mix 2 layers of noise, one macro and one micro
if you wanted that larger warbling of uneven ground and patches that is
willow pike
Yeah I might do it with the second material, really wanted to get one to do it but it's probably not worth it
Edges look like this right now, don't hate it but if you have any ideas for how to make it better lmk
It does make for a cool effect for the top side of grass where it's near the water, looks almost like a brush stroke
rustic dragon
yeah, it does
if you wanted to make the front edges fluffy, you'd have to push forward that polygon edge
that closer show shows the warbling on the shadows, that looks great
willow pike
Yeah I may just manually pull some of those vertices forward in Probuilder to make them hang over the lips of the cliff sides
You rule though, thanks again
rustic dragon
no problem
dusk tapir
so, im trying to work with polybrush, and was wondering if it was even possible for HDRP to work nicely with polybrush's texture painting
ocean spade
i'm trying distortion shaders with the Scene Color node.
Here, the red quad is distorting outwards from center, but because distortion is in screen-space, the effect appears stronger when it's at the far side of the disc, when really i'd like it to be more consistent with world space if that makes sense
there should be a way to account for this and make it world-space and i guess it should involve the distance and perpendicularity to the camera but i thought i'd ask if anyones tackled this before i start trial and error'ing
ocean spade
... so i've accounted for the distance and it's still not perfect but it's improved it good enough
graph if anyones curious, selected nodes where the fix
devout quarry
@dusk tapir yup shader graph + polybrush works nicely for me, are you having any issues?
@ocean spade I was having the same issue yesterday, will try out your fix
terse nexus
This https://discordapp.com/channels/489222168727519232/497874081329184799/664197146463174722
Really giving me a hard time. I dont even know where I can find an entry point to start looking
amber saffron
Nothing really yet. You'll need to wait for a terrain master node for shadergraph
You still can do a shader and apply it to the terrain, but getting the layers splat and textures is no trivial
terse nexus
Is there any info when that will be added?
Cause the terrain kinda sticks out through not having that shader
Or can I just write a custom node that gives me the needed textures/layers?
amber saffron
I kind of tried that and failed. But I might get back to it
But you can still "hack" it I guess, by only adding texture properties for the splat maps that are visible in the project view (so you can reference them), and do what you want afterwards in the shader
left pivot
Is there a way to receive shadows with unlit graph?
silver moat
@left pivot
There is, and it's basically how some people create "custom lighting". Basically, you get information on the lights yourself (direction, intensity, color, etc) and then do the neccesary math within your graph to compute those values.
Check out the following link for more info. If you search for "custom lightning unity" you will probably find blog posts about it somewhere else.
As a side note, watch out if you are working with HDRP, for things may get a little trickier.
tranquil bronze
im not recieving shadows from custom lighting in shader graph
this is the tutorial im following
lapis vigil
When I load Polybrush, it only loads two Shaders. The Unity tutorial implies that there should be around ten or so. I've removed and reloaded Polybrush, as well as restarted Unity. Anyone know what else I could try?!
silk sky
can somebody link me a tutorial to make a crystal shader in unity? I haven't foudn any
rustic dragon
@devout quarry nice, we use something like that called BumpOffset in unreal and you can do some great fake 'depth' things with it, I wonder if that math included in that is possible to replicate in shader graph without a custom node
looks like it could
devout quarry
yup definitely
ah without a custom node haha
this ice shader uses a loop
in a custom node
I tried replicating a bump offset node in shadergraph a while ago, let me see what I got
rustic dragon
yeah, I hope for loop functionality soon, right now you just have to duplicate things as many times as you need/want
devout quarry
Or use a custom function node, it's convenient
rustic dragon
I know, just saying it'd be nice to just use nodes, making custom function nodes isn't artist friendly
devout quarry
Are there 'loop' nodes in ue4? What do they look like?
Like what are the inputs/outputs
rustic dragon
I don't think they have them, they just have some built in nodes that do that, though BumpOffset is badly named
just thinking a node for that would be nice in the long run, but I can see how it would be a pretty detailed node
so it might be a non-starter as an idea
devout quarry
@rustic dragon
I did something like this
The grid pattern is a quad and kind of mapped to the geometry below
rustic dragon
where is the quad compared to the sphere height wise?
is it like a projector for like a decal?
devout quarry
I don't think it's 100% perfect but it's kind of working
I'll show you what I wanted to replicate, 1 sec
rustic dragon
ah nice, how did you get it to NOT just stretch infinitely on the side of that cube, are those cube sides not perpendicular to the sides, or is the quad slightly rotated?
devout quarry
this was it
quad is parallel to ground plane, cube is also not rotated
the angle is 90 degrees
https://twitter.com/klemen_lozar/status/952219112796598272 here is a link to the tweet
I'll clean up the graph a bit and show you
but it was just a quick mockup and haven't worked on it since so don't judge me too much on it 😉
rustic dragon
so that uses the CameraDepth data?
faint notch
@tranquil bronze https://github.com/ciro-unity/BotW-ToonShader/blob/master/Assets/Shaders/CustomLighting.hlsl use this instead. Which uses GetMainLightShadowSamplingData() that will work for unlit master node.
@tranquil bronze the customlightning hlsl from https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ShaderGraph-Custom-Lighting/blob/master/Assets/Includes/CustomLighting.hlsl doesnt work on unlit, it will always return shadowattenuation of 1
devout quarry
These are the relevant nodes
yeah it uses the camera's depth texture
but as I said, this graph does not work 100%, there are some issues
rustic dragon
ah, I was playing around with it, trying to get some 'encroaching' doom thing https://gfycat.com/jubilantillfatedichthyosaurs using the depth and render to texture
I was actually sampling _CameraDepthTexture though, what you are doing is much better!
rustic dragon
yeah, with some built in nodes, I will try that
like I used a texture sampler with that as an input
devout quarry
the surface depth node is a subgraph btw, but it's screenposition.a basically
or well screenposition.w
low lichen
@rustic dragon Cool effect! It could be improved if it was based on distance from camera rather than the depth value directly, so it's more of a radius rather than like a quad approaching the camera
rustic dragon
@low lichen yeah, I was thinking of doing that but am noob enough to not really know out at this time 🙂
my original ideas was to 'stretch' reality like reality was warping in some way, like 'up' as it came to you
but there really wasn't enough data in the render to texture, but also my setup with how I am capturing and displaying uses 3 cameras, so I really need to learn about the render pipelines more
low lichen
That effect uses multiple cameras? I thought it was just post processing effect using the depth texture.
rustic dragon
it's a material thing, originaly I had lines like scanning lines coming from the camera, and I don't know how to use a shader graph material for post processing
low lichen
You could always just do a Graphics.Blit from a script after the camera has rendered. There's ways to do your own custom effects using the post processing stack which I'm sure is more performant if you're doing a lot of stacked effects, but last time I tried that it was a lot of boiler code.
rustic dragon
totally, this was just a fun hack as a proof of concept (or working on it) as somebody wanted a teleport affect and it piqued my interest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpLevdY7o0o this one everybody at work wants, I 'think' with the bump offset node I could do it visually, but being able to fall into it is pretty cool and I have no idea where to start
not asking for solution at work in unreal, but it's an interesting effect for unity too
devout quarry
I have a cool shader to share
low lichen
Let's see it!
rustic dragon
tease
devout quarry
Card (except for pokemon model) is 1 quad, 1 shader and only 1 sampled texture (for the text)
I wanted to push my personal limits and use as few textures as possible
rustic dragon
hah, nice
dusk tapir
@devout quarry yea, i am having problems, i can use the color brush, but not the texture brush
low lichen
@devout quarry So the background isn't a texture?
devout quarry
nope, the only texture is for the text
the background is some gradient with voronoi
all the icons are signed distance functions
the spheres are raymarched with faked lighting
and yeah the pokemon is 3D with a stencil shader in front of it
rustic dragon
what is that done in?
rustic dragon
so that's not render to texture for the pokemon?
devout quarry
it's a 3d pokemon model with a stencil mask in front of it
so the card is 1 quad, but then I put 1 extra quad with a stencil shader in front of it to make room for the pokemon scene
hold on
low lichen
Shader Graph supports stencils?
rustic dragon
what do you think the instruction count for that is? can you have multiple cards on screen even overlapping eachother?
devout quarry
no, stencil is not done in shadergraph
haven't tested but my graph is very large and I think this is the worst way to make this card
low lichen
Using multiple textures would certainly be fewer instructions and more performant, but that wasn't the goal of this shader I imagine.
devout quarry
Nope, I actually wanted to use 0 textures and started using bezier curves to render the text in shader, but in the end it got super annoying and did a texture
this is the setup
rustic dragon
pretty damn cool
devout quarry
And I made quite a few pokemon type icons actually in shadergraph using signed distance functions
Because I wasn't sure which pokemon I was going to use
willow pike
That looks amazing @devout quarry
low lichen
Nice! What's the process of creating functions for icons like that? Are there tools to help with that?
devout quarry
yes! https://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions2d/distfunctions2d.htm this page by far
rustic dragon
I have a card game I am kind of making, and I planned on doing something like this where the gun kind of 'pops' out of the card if it's selected
devout quarry
https://alexanderameye.github.io/parallax-card.html I have some more info on the card here if you're interested
rustic dragon
saved link 🙂
devout quarry
ah so it becomes 3D, that's a cool effect
rustic dragon
that is the hope, with a real 3D background behind it
dusk tapir
Alexander, last night/this morning, you said you were able to use the texture brush in polybrush with HDRP?
devout quarry
yup I used this shader
for vertex painting
I hope that's what you mean with texture brush otherwise I'm misunderstanding
dusk tapir
why does your unlit master only have one option?
devout quarry
I collapsed the unused options since I only use color
There is like a little downwards arrow on a node that collapses the ports
dusk tapir
well, im wondering because your one option is "Color" whereas mine is "Base Color", and wondering if that has any difference
devout quarry
I'm using unlit node in URP
rustic dragon
is the split node different now in URP, or are you collapsing it somehow to only show the output you are using?
devout quarry
collapsed, I always collapse all my nodes
rustic dragon
oh, I see it now, it's on the top right
devout quarry
I would love for shadergraph to have a screenshot button
exporting your whole graph has a crisp high quality image
low lichen
Maybe possible through an editor script 🤔
rustic dragon
yeah, unreal has this ability to save your node graph as a text file, so you can 'share' it really easily, you just copy the text and paste it in the editor
knotty juniper
yeah, unreal has this ability to save your node graph as a text file, so you can 'share' it really easily, you just copy the text and paste it in the editor
@rustic dragon Guess what the Shadergraph asset file is.
rustic dragon
ah, so it does do that
stone sandal
the .shadergraph file extension is a JSON text file c:
they're not super human readable at the moment
but definitely shareable text files
knotty juniper
i would like to have better copy paste to json for it but its working for the moment
dusk tapir
@devout quarry yea, it looks like we are talking about different things, because that doesnt work for me
this is what im trying to use
dusk tapir
the middle brush, the one that just paints colors works fine with the example shader, but no matter what i try, the texture shader always tells me that it isnt supported
faint notch
@terse nexus did you look at the book of dead project? it uses hdrp with custom terrain shader, might get you started.
ivory dock
Hey there, just downloaded a skybox package from Assets Store, first time changing Skybox, where do i do this ? Like i now have some files with 6 image each
Don't really know in which channel to ask that so i guessed here would be appropriate, sorry if not
willow pike
Open the Lighting window it should be right at the top @ivory dock
Anyone know how I could write a shader (or otherwise) to easily create paths like this using a single mesh? Made them as tiles but if I could get just the grass edge with the shadow to repeat along the edges I could get the effect I want.
Would save me a lot of time making dirt paths 😅
Just not sure how it would wrap along corners
ivory dock
I'm on it, how do i create Skybox from my 6 files now ? looks like this :
willow pike
You should be able to make them a Skybox in the texture and material settings
make a material for each skybox and make sure the texture is marked as a skybox
rustic dragon
@willow pike if the shape of that is not determinant it might be tough in a shader unless you made some sample 'texture' prefabs of dirt paths
ivory dock
Worked fine, thank you bro 😄
willow pike
Ahh yeah, I guess I'll probably end up making a bunch of different path types using prefabs
Was hoping I could just draw out the paths using planes in Probuilder and slap a material on them. Probably wishful thinking
rustic dragon
the edge work would be a problem, hard to really control
you could probably do it with some gradients and some polygon meshes with some edge loops around the edges that would help inform the edge stuff
willow pike
Interesting, well it might be above my skill level atm. Just wasn't sure if there was a simple way to do it in Shader Graph I hadn't realized. Thanks!
faint notch
@willow pike make a C# script to combine them on build automatically, thats what they did in monument valley
autumn seal
Hi, I'm using shader graph in URP. Is Overlay not support in render queue?
willow pike
Good idea @faint notch I saw that video where the dev of MV talked about how they did that. I’ll have to see if I can pull something like that off. I’ve been using visual scripting for everything so far. More of an artist than a developer ha.
sand pasture
I'm fairly confused by the shader manual on unity's website. could someone point me in the direction of some resources that will provide me with a good rundown?
vocal narwhal
There are some resources pinned to this channel
not sure what exactly you're looking for
drowsy abyss
Hey, I'm thinking of practicing mapping textures to meshes using a technique that I've heard about, but am not sure what it's called. The idea is to colour a model according to a material type, then for each colour, paint over that colour with some other texture. So for example, "red" parts might represent wood where "green" parts might represent metal. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
rustic dragon
vertex coloring as a mask
so you can paint vert colors on the models verts, RGB like you are saying, then in the shader you can use the vert colors as a mask to lerp texture layers together
drowsy abyss
@rustic dragon Right, does this technique have a specific name?
Or is that just it?
drowsy abyss
Okay, thanks! I was looking for a starting point so I could at least speak the same language as others on the subject.
drowsy abyss
Apart from hooking up a PBR graph linearly like this, for what reason would my cube appear so dark with a directional light facing directly at it?
I'm using the HDRP example scene metal textures.
The subgraph is also linearly passing those textures through. Metal, occlusion and smoothness are RGA channels respectively. I've checked 1000x that everything that I just said is exactly how it's set up in my project.
More information: I've reduced the inputs to just diffuse and normal maps, and the lighting still looks wrong. The better-looking cube is a material packed with the HDRP default scene.
faint notch
@willow pike if your not used to programming, you could try probuilder and progrids, there is some built in functionality to combine meshes there.
silk sky
does exist a way to invert the fresnel effect?
I remember that adding a -1 somewhere will generate that effect
faint notch
@silk sky Just use one minus?
faint notch
silk sky
oh its actually a node
faint notch
faint notch
thats just showing you what the node outputs, think of it as a mask
if you multiply by a color for example green, your gonna get a green glow from center - the inverse of a fresnel which gives you green glow on edges
silk sky
okok
brazen kernel
@vocal narwhal wdym tiling
brazen kernel
and i just plug that into the UV of the noise , right?
autumn seal
Is it possible to change render queue to overlay in shader graph using urp?
tranquil bronze
@faint notch shadows are appearing but am still getting weird results ?? https://gyazo.com/19f105f2a5689019b508bf68d3a5c7dd
i changed the distance value for shadows in the urp renderer and it seems to fix the issue however the shadow quality decreased, there is 4 cascades btw. How can i maintain the shadow quality
i dont want it to be pixelated
faint notch
@tranquil bronze
@tranquil bronze yep! that is whats causing it
are you developing for mobile?
tranquil bronze
all platforms
faint notch
set distance as low as you can for your game without losing shadows, if you are on mobile i dont think you can use cascades, might need to look into alternative solutions as the sharp shadows for LWRP/URP on asset store
tranquil bronze
so mobile too
tranquil bronze
can i change the distance value via a script?
depending on how far away the camera is
faint notch
yep
tranquil bronze
ok thanks :)
faint notch
But as i mentioned you might not get cascades on mobile right, so might be worth to look into other solutions if that is something you want to include
graceful lotus
Is anyone familiar with normal maps in Shader Graph? I know how to combine vertex normals with a normal map in a shader, but I'm unsure how to properly achieve that in a shader graph with custom lighting.
I know you can normally just plug a normal map into the Normal input on a master node, but I have custom lighting calculations, and so I want to get world space normals manually and pass them in.
I got a world-space normal out of the texture with some trial-and-error, like so:
But the vert normals aren't being normalized per-vertex, so the results aren't quite right. I could add a Normalize node after, but the whole thing seems hacky. Is there a "proper" way to get world normals, or is this pretty much it?
grand jolt
this might have been asked before
but how do i recreate water ripple effects
im trying to get a scene where a plane is hovering over a plane
what is a simple of achieving it effectively ?
low lichen
@grand jolt Plane hovering over a plane? What does that have to do with water ripples?
You mean an airplane hovering over water?
graceful lotus
Airplane hovering over a planar surface, I assume.
tall gull
Hi everyone, i wanted to ask a quick question. Is there an easy way of implementing effect shaders to apply on meshes on top of their own materials? For example: When a character is under the effect of a healing status effect they get a green fresnel effect. Implementing the effect for every material in the game is a lot of work and not expandable so I was wondering if its possible to just create the effect as a seperate material and apply it on top of other materials. Thanks!
rustic dragon
from what I know, not unless you have another mesh on top of the other one
what you'd need to do is include the shader math to include when the spell is on, and then enable enough parameters to get you any type of spell affect (parameters, masks, et), then in script get the spell parameters and set those in game
tall gull
Ah, okay. Thats what i wanted to avoid. Adding a new effect would mean going over every material one by one, which is pretty bad if there are a lot of things that can have that effect
Thanks
rustic dragon
yeah, it can suck, if you are using shader graph, you can make a subgraph that acts as a pass through on all your new materials (old ones, etc), then in that pass through subgraph, you can add all the new fun stuff when you can, then it will propagate throughout your materials if they have that subGraph implemented
low lichen
@tall gull You can add the special effect material as a second material (yes, mesh renderers can have multiple materials). What that will do is it will render the mesh multiple times for each material there is.
tall gull
I tried that first but it seemed like it doesn't function well, not sure tho
a lot of clipping etc
low lichen
Hmm, that shouldn't happen. Did you have multiple mesh renderers or just one with multiple materials, like I described?
I've done this myself, with a fresnel glow effect as well
No issues
This is without any scriptable render pipeline, I don't know if it's any different in LWRP or HDRP
rustic dragon
you can't have multiple mesh renderers, at least I cant with my build
low lichen
You mean multiple materials?
rustic dragon
ah, saw you say multiple mesh renders
each material will only render on it's specific triangles from my experience
each submesh
low lichen
Yeah, that is if you have submeshes. If there are no submeshes, it will render the same mesh again with that second material
rustic dragon
ah interesting
low lichen
Seems to work fine in LWRP, too
rustic dragon
I wonder if it's literally 2x the cost
low lichen
Versus doing the fresnel in the one material?
rustic dragon
with or without any transparency on the upper layer
yeah
I imagine if the 0 material is opaque, and if you did a translucent material in 1, if it'd just be opaque
low lichen
In terms of CPU cost, then kinda since it introduces an extra draw call
Yeah, the glow material is a transparent additive blend just doing fresnel.
In my case, anyway
rustic dragon
probably be cheaper to do it in one material, though it's more hassle for sure
low lichen
For GPU, it will cause overdraw where it could have been avoided by doing it in the one material
low lichen
If you can manually render stuff in Unreal, then it's just a case of rendering the same mesh again in the same place with a different material
It just happens that Unity has this kinda undocumented feature of rendering the same mesh multiple times
It would be possible to do in script, too
rustic dragon
yeah, instead of a swiss army shader
though 2x the cost would not be welcome at work, I should do a comparison, I wish unity had some overdraw and shader cost visualization modes
low lichen
The fresnel shader is super simple, almost everything in the vertex shader. That reduces the cost of the overdraw a lot, which is how we got away with it even on mobile
The most significant cost is on CPU
rustic dragon
but overdraw would be 2x
low lichen
Well, it depends how complex the pixel shader that is shading that pixel
And how many pixels on screen
There's probably some overhead to just draw onto a pixel, regardless of how complex or simple the shader is, but it doesn't seem to be much.
I never did any proper profiling on it though
rustic dragon
the triangle count with stats with just the sphere (alone in the scene) goes from 4.8k to 5.5k
and verts, damn
actually more with two default-materials
low lichen
True. This technique is quite similar to how the built-in renderer does additive lighting. It renders the meshes with the base lighting, just directional and baked lighting, and then draws the mesh again with additive lighting drawn on top.
rustic dragon
yeah, exactly the same reaction to if I duped the sphere, makes sense
low lichen
If you have many objects using the same additive glow material, then there won't be 2x SetPass calls, since Unity can draw all the additive glow materials in a row.
So it's not quite 2x on CPU, unless you only have one object using this technique.
But it is always 2x triangles and pixels
umbral trench
does anyone here have experience using depth based edge detection?
umbral trench
I'm trying to create a Black and White floorplan effect and I seem to have gotten really close but it falls apart on faces that are angled, instead of a nice outline it creates a stepped effect, (forum post with current code in it: https://forum.unity.com/threads/possible-to-hdrp-edge-detect-each-object-and-show-overlapping-objects-floor-plan-effect.804540/#post-5349783)
devout quarry
this shader based on roystan's tutorial?
I guess you'll need to change the sensitivity based on the angle
and so in the floor plan these objects are like desks or something and they are slightly tilted right?
lower your depth threshold so the small depth differences don't get picked up and use the normals, could be a solution
or you calculate whether or not a pixel belongs to a surface that is somewhat facing the camera, then turn down the depth sensitivity for that pixel
a dynamic threshold/sensitivity based on surface angle would be a good solution here I think
low lichen
Wouldn't it be a lot more robust if it was based on scene normals?
Eh, I say this with no experience in edge detection shaders
devout quarry
yeah adding normal based detection is nice, but this could be done with depth only too
umbral trench
I'm not aware of Roystan or their tutorials, it was modified from the TIPS effect on the alelievr repository that a Unity staff member directed me to, I will look them up.
yes the circled parts are control panels that have about a 7 degree angle to them
I have 0 experience writing shaders haha didn't even know you could do that for some of them, I will try to implement those changes, thank you for the advice!
devout quarry
okay hold on
read this
especially section 3 but I recommend reading the whole article
He explains changing depth thresholds based on view direction
I'm fairly sure this will solve your problem
umbral trench
wow thank you very much!
devout quarry
and tbh like mentally mentioned it would be worth it to try out normals based outlines as well
you sample them the same as depth
then use max(edgeNormal, edgeColor)
and so then a pixel will be either an outlined pixel because of a depth or a normal contribution
and that way you could turn down the depth sensitivity until it no longer picks up the depth discontinuities on the slightly tilted surface, and let the normals handle the work
umbral trench
ah okay, thanks! I will dive into this tutorial and see if it solves my problems
devout quarry
good luck, I'd be interested to see the result so feel free to tag me
dapper pollen
dumb question but do you still use #include "UnityCG.cginc" for renderpipeline shaders? edit found the replacement
grizzled oriole
Can anyone suggest reading material on writing fast compute shaders? I'm considering using compute shaders for an aspect of my game's AI but I'd like to determine if it's even worth trying first
fervent tinsel
@dapper pollen yeah, that's legacy thing
usually if you put that into SRP shader, you are in a whole lot of trouble 😄
dapper pollen
yeah, im really out of my depth with shaders and renderpasses 😄
mental verge
Anyone good with ASE?
For mesh particle instancing, does ASE support vertex color and UVs?
a vfx guy here is having some trouble getting it working.
fervent tinsel
for ASE, you'd probably get better luck on asking about it on amplify's own discord
they have quite active staff and community there
@mental verge
low lichen
@grizzled oriole What kind of computation are you planning on doing in the compute shader?
mental verge
thank you, @fervent tinsel I initially threw that question over there, but didnt get a response within an hour, so thought I'd put it here just in case. thx! sorry for being impatient!
native garnet
I got an interesting question
Can you put a pbr shader to the skybox?
I mean pbr graph shader
amber saffron
No
native garnet
Not even any other custom shader?
I wanted to give the skybox a sinusoidal wave like movement
amber saffron
Depends on what renderpipeline you're using.
In HDRP there is some doc to write your own sky
tranquil bronze
i followed this tutorial in brackeys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szsWx9IQVDI&t=32s
the shadows are rendering on top of the player (the blue capsule) how do i fix this??
fervent tinsel
@native garnet you can put unlit graph to custom mesh that has faces inside but you'll not get renderers sky feats from it (ambient light etc)
It is not the intended way but could work still, depending on your application
devout quarry
Exactly what I do in my projects 0lento
Have a sundisk follow the directional light direction
graceful lotus
Shader graph question: anyone passed Texture2D/SamplerState to a custom function before? I can't seem to get it to use the texture's default sampler.
On the custom function node, I'm passing in the texture, but nothing for the sampler - in the texture's import settings, wrap mode is Clamp, but when I sample it in the custom function, it's Repeat. I can create an explicit SamplerState node and pass that in, but I want it to use the texture's default sampler in case its import settings change (and for future reference, of course).
regal stag
@graceful lotus As far as I know, you can't obtain the SamplerState created for the texture2D passed into the function. However, one is created for each texture property created, using the "sampler" prefix. (e.g. If the property has the reference "Tex", the sampler will be "samplerTex"). If you always know which texture is being passed into the function, you can do something like this to use the sampler for that specific texture (and use a default one for the shadergraph preview, as it will error otherwise).
This isn't a perfect solution of course - it requires a specific property to be used, and won't work if you switch the texture input out for a different texture property. Hopefully it gives some ideas though. (Alternatively, you could use the Sample Texture node and pass in the Vector4 result, assuming you aren't sampling the texture in a loop. Or if you are using the custom function to manipulate the UVs, perhaps output the Vector2 UVs to then be put into a Sample Texture node rather than sampling it in the function).
graceful lotus
You make a good point - indeed, it's a look-up texture so I know the name and could assume the name of the sampler.
And yes, I'm sampling it for lighting calculations, so it's in the "additional lights" loop, and can't be done within shader graph itself. :/
Until they add support for looping or returning multiple values.
Thanks!
I particularly like that this removes the SamplerState as an argument, that sure was bloating the function signature.
For that matter, do I even need to pass in the texture? I could just sample it by name too, or will Unity think it's unused and strip it out?
regal stag
Well, I think it still needs a SamplerState argument, as if you try to use "samplerTex" in shadergraph it will error, hence the need for the #ifdef SHADERGRAPH_PREVIEW. I suppose if you are writing the function via code though, you could create a temporary sampler though? (like the "SamplerState my_point_clamp_sampler;" example in https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-SamplerStates.html)
Also I could be wrong, but I don't think the blackboard property values get stripped out, even if you don't use them.
graceful lotus
Oh of course, I believe you're right.
regal stag
So yeah, you might not need to pass the texture in. However, if you don't pass it in the preview won't be able to access it, assuming the preview is important.
If the preview isn't important, then you could just pass out float3(1,1,1) or something.
graceful lotus
In my case it's not, since I can't #include other files to use the Light/BRDFData structs, so the preview is already useless to me for this shader.
Exactly.
regal stag
@graceful lotus Hmm, I could be wrong but if you specify the function in a file, you should be able to use #include.
Oh or do you mean for the sake of the preview?
graceful lotus
Yes.
regal stag
Ah I see 🙂
graceful lotus
In the preview, it was giving "redefinition of _Time" and other errors, so I couldn't include the Light struct for example, which I use in my lighting calculations.
So the preview is already just unlit albedo.
Ohhh, I think the texture property exists, but it thinks it's unused, so in the compiled shader there's no Texture2D _MyLUT declared.
So, I do need to pass the texture into the function... or at least use it somewhere so it gets included. 😦
It worked - I was just testing the function in a written shader, and had to move my custom file's #include to after the LUT is declared, so it can find it. 😛
It's beautiful, hooray!
Here, have a fleshy ceiling light. 😆
Custom lighting with approximate sub-surface scattering.
...I just grabbed the first complex mesh I could find to test it on.
rustic dragon
just because you can create such a thing doesn't mean you should . . 😛
regal stag
Haha
grizzled oriole
@low lichen I want to simulate a grid in a match-3 puzzle game. Or, rather, lots of them, because I'm writing an AI that will be planning a few moves ahead
devout quarry
I'm having an issue where I'm moving 2 identical textures at different speeds and overlaying them. Periodically they line up and you see like a 'flash' because the intensity is doubled. I tried fixing it with a minimum function but it does not seem to work like intended..
You'll see a brief flash in the preview right
graceful lotus
Can you also rotate one of them, so they never line up?
Maybe just flip the uv coords?
silk sky
How can I convert this into unity nodes?
regal stag
@devout quarry If the noise is between 0 and 1, when they line up both sample textures will return 1, so the minimum is 1.
rustic dragon
or just scale up the 2nd one, in addition to rotation and/or flipping
devout quarry
A simple 45 degree rotation would do enough to never make them line up right?
graceful lotus
Literally any rotation/scale will prevent them from matching up.
rustic dragon
I think scale would be cheaper, you can save like .0001 ms!
devout quarry
Then I'll scale 😉
graceful lotus
Depends on the visual result you're going for - obviously scale will increase (or decrease) the noise grain size.
rustic dragon
do all the transforms
graceful lotus
You could flip the UV coords to mirror one sample too; maintain grain scale and prevent lining up.
devout quarry
Thank you all
devout quarry
How can I get the scene luminance in shadergraph?
could I extract it from the scene color?
Ah! there is function 'Luminance' that converts rgb -> luminance, perfect
low lichen
@grizzled oriole Do you have some algorithm in mind that can be run in parallel in a compute shader?
silk sky
I would like to create a vertex displacement by using a texture, can somebody help me?
grizzled oriole
@low lichen Basically, porting this Burst job I wrote https://pastebin.com/zJygzbB6
The data going in to the GPU would be:
- One copy of the game's block grid (an 8x20 byte grid, basically), copied locally by each GPU thread as needed
- A list of actions to consider, grouped in triplets (because the AI looks up to three moves ahead); not sure how big each triplet will be but I'm shooting to get it under 8 bytes
Data coming out of the GPU would be:
- A score for each triplet (probably 32 bits each but I could probably do 16), and then the CPU will look at each score and tell the AI what to do next
devout quarry
@silk sky in shadergraph?
silk sky
yes
grizzled oriole
@low lichen As I understand it:
Pros:
- Not executed every frame, probably more like every second or so
- Each block grid prediction is independent of the others
- An individual prediction doesn't need a lot of memory (but there will be a lot of predictions)
Cons:
- Lots of branching
- Lots of loops (mostly fixed length, but one of unknown length)
- Math is entirely integer-based, not float-based
What I want to know is:
- Are there pros or cons I'm not seeing?
- Are any of these cons (including ones I don't know of) enough to sink my idea, or is it still worth putting the time in to implement and test it?
low lichen
@grizzled oriole Are you okay with the data coming back possibly coming in a frame or 2 after the compute shader is dispatched?
grizzled oriole
@low lichen Yes.
As long as I can reliably tell when it's done executing. And as long as I can make it faster than my existing Burst version
(Though I may still need to use Burst for parts of it anyway, in order to prepare the buffer to send to the GPU.)
devout quarry
@silk sky
The 'trick' is to use the Sample Texture 2D LOD node instead of just Sample Texture 2D
silk sky
ok thanks
devout quarry
Because Sample Texture 2D is a pixel shader node
Sample Texture 2D LOD is a vertex shader node
low lichen
@grizzled oriole So you're not using any jobs or threads currently? Just Burst?
silk sky
ooh ok
grizzled oriole
@low lichen Well, yes, Burst and the Job system
silk sky
but is this displacement only for one axis?
grizzled oriole
@low lichen What I'm trying to determine is if there's a possibility that using a compute shader for what I want to do would be faster (so I can make my AI smarter). If there's a possibility, I'll try it and find out for sure. But I'm not gonna do it if there are red flags in my plan that I'm not seeing
low lichen
The more threads you make use of, the better
devout quarry
You can do the displacement however you want, in my example it is for the y axis only
silk sky
ok
grizzled oriole
@low lichen Yes, of course, but these threads will have a lot of branching and loops. On the CPU, that's fine. On the GPU, less so, but I don't know if that's a deal-breaker.
low lichen
@grizzled oriole I don't understand exactly what each job is doing here. Is it being run for each cell of the grid? Why are there so many for loops in the SimulateGrid method?
grizzled oriole
@low lichen My game is a match-3 game. When 3 or more blocks of the same color are matched horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, they disappear. The blocks above them fall down, and when they land that might in turn cause new matches.
4 loops because I have to check four directions (W-E, S-N, NW-SE, SW-NE)
One outer loop of unspecified length because I don't know in advance how many chains there will be
Oh, also, there are garbage blocks that don't match with other blocks, but are cleared when any non-garbage block next to them is cleared (if you've ever played Puyo Puyo, exactly like that)
low lichen
And how many jobs are you running in parallel now?
grizzled oriole
One job with (number of parallel threads) - 1 threads
My CPU is a hyper-threaded quad-core, so in my case 7 threads (I leave one for the main thread)
I also use Burst for some other related jobs (e.g. to decide which actions the AI should consider, and to pick the best one after they're all simulated), but those related jobs operate sequentially so I don't see much of a point in putting them on the GPU
low lichen
Are you planning on running the compute shader for each cell of the grid? Like each pixel of a texture?
grizzled oriole
Yes but it's a small grid (just 8x20). The issue isn't the size of the grid, the issue is that the AI will have a lot of choices to make (and therefore predictions to simulate)
Each thread evaluates one prediction, and I imagine on the GPU the same would be true
low lichen
Doesn't sound like a task that the GPU would do much faster than the CPU, unless I'm missing something
grizzled oriole
Can you tell me your understanding of my problem?
low lichen
I guess that's the problem, I don't have a very good understanding :P. So you're running 8x20 jobs currently?
grizzled oriole
No.
I'm running one job with thousands of predictions to evaluate. Each thread simulates one prediction
low lichen
My understanding of the C# job system was a job = a thread. Is that a misunderstanding?
grizzled oriole
Sort of. One job == one to-do list. If that to-do list is big, it's often run on several threads
If the to-do list is small (but the item itself is big), it's just run on one thread (but in the background so it doesn't stall the main game)
low lichen
So it's somehow automatically splitting a big synchronous task into multiple threads? How does that work?
grizzled oriole
It's not. It's splitting a bunch of small tasks into multiple threads.
I could split a single big task (say, sorting a big array) into multiple threads with the job system if I wanted to, but I don't.
low lichen
Are these small tasks defined in the pastebin you posted?
grizzled oriole
Yes
The big complicated function is that task, but it's being run thousands of times
Many thousands. I haven't taken a count in months, but it's big enough that I have to artificially limit the number of predictions (i.e. the number of times that the job I linked is run)
The mean reason I'm considering moving this to a compute shader is to see if doing so would allow more predictions (and therefore a smarter AI)
low lichen
SimulateGrid is simulating the whole 8x20 grid at different states?
grizzled oriole
Yes
Well, one state in that function call
Maybe if you play the game it'll be a little clearer? https://corundumgames.itch.io/chromavaders
low lichen
Right, but each run is of a different state
grizzled oriole
Yes, that is correct
Each run is also independent; I just need to give each run a score (through means specific to my game) and later on I'll make the AI do whatever caused the run with the best score
low lichen
So you say this function is being called thousands of times. Is each thread calling it multiple times then or are there thousands of threads?
grizzled oriole
Thousands of threads, if you want to think of it that way
(Technically just a handful of threads sharing the load amongst themselves, but that's an implementation detail of the job system)
low lichen
So how many threads do you plan on running? I'm thinking of the Dispatch method specifically:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ComputeShader.Dispatch.html
grizzled oriole
A lot more than 7.
grizzled oriole
I could if it would help
low lichen
There's a specific resolution that you have to choose, though. If you wanted to run a compute shader to turn every pixel of a texture to red, you'd run (width, height, 1) threads
So there's one thread for each pixel of the texture
Then in the compute shader, you get this index which you can use to write to a texture or a cell of a grid
grizzled oriole
Yes, that's right
Even though my list of predictions is logically a 1D list, I guess I could treat it as a square or even a cube, even if I need to pad it at the end so it'll factor into 2 or 3 divisors nicely
low lichen
So each prediction will run the SimulateGrid function to compute the resulting score?
grizzled oriole
Yes
low lichen
And you keep simulating until the combo has ended, if there is one?
grizzled oriole
That is correct
I do it up to three times, because the AI will look up to three moves ahead
low lichen
You mean up to 3 separate combos or up to 3 matches in a row?
I assume the former. The AI simulates doing an action and that might end up doing a 10 match combo, then it simulates a second action and that might lead to 1 match, then simulates the last third action?
low lichen
It doesn't sound super compute shader friendly. In theory, one thread could run for 100 iterations (if it's a really long combo) and another thread only 1 iteration, if there was no match?
grizzled oriole
Yes, that's correct. But definitely not 100 iterations (because the grid is small). I haven't yet come up with a worst-case but probably not more than 10 iterations
The reason I'm even considering a compute shader is because each invocation is independent and doesn't need a lot of data (and doesn't output a lot of data)
low lichen
I can't say I'm confident enough about this to advise you to not at least test this. If you have the time to spare to convert this to a compute shader, why not
grizzled oriole
But I don't know if one of these considerations significantly outweighs the others.
So what are you saying: Worth trying, not worth trying, or unsure?
low lichen
My gut tells me that the amount of branching and unknown iteration count will make this unfit for a compute shader, but I don't have enough experience to tell you straight that it isn't worth it
I think @dark flare will know better than me.
dark flare
💦 how far up should i scroll for this
dark flare
whats the question?
low lichen
You want to answer that @grizzled oriole?
dark flare
ping me when you have a single message with question pls lol, at work atm
cant read the whole discussion
low lichen
Sorry about that, I'll let @grizzled oriole decide if they want more answers.
grizzled oriole
@dark flare The aforementioned Pastebin contains a Burst job that I am considering porting to a compute shader. On one hand, the job is embarrassingly parallel and individual threads don't need a lot of data as input or output. On the other, there's a lot of branching and loops, and one of the loops isn't of a constant length. My question: is there enough of a chance that a GPU port of this job would outperform a Burst version to warrant a benchmark?
If so, then I can make the AI smarter by making more predictions
dark flare
Just try it lol. Depends on your hardware, although recent hardware doesn't have such issues with branching. If you can gaurantee loop length you'll get some milage though
If you have it working in a burst job it should be trivial to port and test
If it's for a game, I'd be concerned with the latency of reading it back. Unity doesn't have a way to immediately run a scheduled compute job and return, it has to flush the GPU queue and wait
They have asyc readback for data but it can get delayed multiple frames
grizzled oriole
That's fine, the job doesn't run every frame (probably every half-second or so)
@dark flare Okay, I'll benchmark it and try it. It sounds like there's no immediate deal-breaker, which is ultimately what I was trying to ascertain. Thank you. And you, @low lichen
mild sleet
why does fresnel not really work on cubes?
vocal narwhal
It's based on the difference of the normal to the view direction
mild sleet
so basically the surface has to be curved?
vocal narwhal
I mean, you can see that the parts of the capsule that face the same directions as the cube share the same colour
So it's working exactly as expected
rustic dragon
@mild sleet what effect are you trying to achieve?
mild sleet
An outline glow/highlight sort of thing (similar to how it looks on the capsule)
proven sundial
What is a good approach to create/draw masks in shadergraph?
I've used a rgba mask for tinting and controlling different materials areas on the model in my shader, but I need even more control. For example I'd like to control emission on a,b,c on this illustraton independentlly.
As the location of a,b,c on the texture will not change, I guess i could somehow draw those masks directly in the graph?
..Or simply put, how do you create a square in shadergraph?
proven sundial
D'oh!
devout quarry
@mild sleet you could do it depth based http://alexanderameye.github.io/outlineshader.html
The hlsl shader file for the custom function node is the relevant part for you I think
mild sleet
Thanks, I'll check it out :)
silk sky
I need help
I'm making something like a glow effect inside a transparent crystal using a reverse fresnel
how can I make so the property "Power" change it's value over time from X to Y and vice versa?
rustic dragon
you want it to pulse?
rustic dragon
hello, I think you can push a time node into sin or cos to get a range from 0 to 1 that ping pongs
rustic dragon
doesn't go up and down or pulse, just rises then back to the start
oh, I think the way you have it @silk sky should actually work, does it not?
silk sky
I'm trying, it does in the graph but not in the scene
maybe I just have to adjust values
yep it works now
rustic dragon
triangle wave is a bit more exactly like a ping pong
the sin one kind of lags at 0 and 1
silk sky
Now im trying to make only 2 propertis for control Min and Max
rustic dragon
in your remap?
silk sky
yes
i made it 😄
like this, I know it's dumb stuff but for me I so satisfying when something works on the first couple of try
silk sky
here we go a lil issue
I playing with value between 0 and 1
0.2 and 0.8 seems ok but if I lower the max sometimes the fresnel generate a strange result like a negative color
rustic dragon
clamp or saturate the value
silk sky
even if its a vector 2 or should I do it before?
rustic dragon
basically after you do math on something, before it goes into a slot, it's safe to saturate unless you really know you want to go above and beyond
silk sky
Ok maybe havent figured out precisely what In Min Max and Out Min Max are. I tought they were a X to Y and Y to X values but that doesnt make too much sense
regal stag
@silk sky If you're confused about what the Min/Max values are in the remap node, this might help. The remap node is equal to doing a Inverse Lerp & Lerp like so : (using UV.x as an example input)
- Note that if your In Mix Max is 0 and 1, the Inverse Lerp node will not actually change the values at all. So rather than using a remap, you could use a Lerp node.
- And if the Out Min Max is 0 and 1, the Lerp node will not change, so you could use a Inverse Lerp node instead.
If you are unfamiliar with Lerp & Inverse Lerp, this is a good twitter thread : https://twitter.com/FreyaHolmer/status/1184218791334612999
dim river
Still very new to shaders + shader graph, I have a basic dissolve shader which works on a solid albedo color. Looks great on a cube, however I now want to transition it to dissolve a model with its own material, texture. I also want this to happen at runtime. This is my current idea, but are there better ways?
- Have 2 materials, standard - and dissolve. The dissolve shader will need to be updated to have all of the properties of the standard shader
- At runtime, switch out these materials when I need to use it, switch back afterwards
dim river
Secondly, recreating all of the properties on a standard shader seems like a lot of work - is there any way to just "extend" the lit shader (for example)
lime meteor
Hey, wondering what the most efficient way to pipe 20736 bytes(192x108 10x10 tiles on a 1080p screen) into a fragment shader per frame. Trying to rig up an ansi-terminal style renderer and have the tile selection pretty much figured out, but need some way to map what character is set for which tile. I'd use a VBO, but apparently from what I've read on the forums they don't seem to work or something
devout quarry
@dim river
so you want an object to dissolve?
Why does a simple dissolve not work on your object?
You can make the shader so it has an albedo texture slot
dim river
Right, but there's also a ton of other properties from the URP/Lit shader that might be being used, base map, metallic map, normals, occlusion, emission, tiling, offset, shadows
devout quarry
True
Personally, if it was my project, I would see what exactly I need in my shader and just create it from scratch, but if you need pretty much everything the lit shader offers, it doesn't make much sense to build it from scratch of course
low lichen
@lime meteor Is it data that can be encoded into a texture?
devout quarry
but honestly, base map, metallic map, normals, occlusion, emmission, tiling etc can all be done fairly easy in shader graph
If you use all the slots of the PBR master node you will have a fairly advanced material already
lime meteor
yeah, a 192x108 texture would be ideal but there's got to be a decent way to blit to it like a canvas. Trying to essentially port the entire ansi controlset to unity
low lichen
@lime meteor Maybe Graphics.Blit is what you need
lime meteor
Using already attached to my main camera to pass through the shader
https://i.imgur.com/0T6aEoM.png this is what it's got me so far
