#archived-shaders

1 messages · Page 205 of 1

meager pelican
#

For now when you see a matrix in a shader, think "transforming a point or a vector" into a different space for whatever reason.

wary jackal
#

Nice. I've only been doing shaders for like a week, so a lot of stuff is going over my head. Right now my end goal is to make a okay-ish custom looking toon shader so I can make a small game

#

Thanks for your help

meager pelican
#

🙂

misty flame
#

I'm having a pretty simple problem where I have a sprite shader that I'm trying to make unlit (so it's not affected by any light) but when I set the material to sprite unlit, it just doesn't show up no matter the base color or the alpha.

unknown.png
meager pelican
#

remove the alpha line, and just plug a 1 into it for now. Does it show up?

misty flame
#

No

meager pelican
#

OK, that's weird. The only other diff I see is that the top (working) one has a tangent-space normal in it. Which, since it is unlit, I don't see where you'd need one.

misty flame
#

Yeah

meager pelican
#

I hate to ask, but are you feeding it a sprite as input?

misty flame
#

Ye

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Do the inputs matter?

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It's a texture2d

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The texture type is default though

meager pelican
#

Show me.

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blackboard, graph.

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A sprite is a mesh.

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Either a quad or it is a computed mesh around the sprite shape.

misty flame
#

I don't think you can input a sprite tho

meager pelican
#

Create a sprite object in the editor.
It's a game object, has a renderer. And maybe a quad or maybe something else. But it is a mesh.
I assume you have that or the lit wouldn't have worked.

misty flame
#

It's a plane using the material made from the shader graph

#

Maybe I should use an actual sprite?

meager pelican
#

You want a sprite.

#

For a sprite material

misty flame
#

So use a sprite renderer rather than a mesh renderer?

meager pelican
#

There's stuff wired up to it that is sprite-ish.

#

Yeah.

misty flame
#

Ok I'll try that thanks

meager pelican
wary jackal
# 
#pragma exclude_renderers d3d11``` Uhh, this appeared randomly?
meager pelican
#

Well, show your v2f struct. Delete the pragma.

wary jackal
#

I think I fixed it, I just defined a variable in the wrong place

silk sky
#

So I've made an outline shader for pickups that should outline the object nearest to player, problem is that when I toggle it on EVERY object with that material and shader get its outline activated, how can I solve that?

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One solution I tought (even if not that clean) was to create an instance of that shader for each object by creating a meterial of every different pickup, the problem is that I generate them via runtime so I cant do that

keen patio
#

Hi, I have generated lightmap uv2 for models, how can I use the uv2 in vertex shader ?
like this :

misty flame
#

Hey I'm trying to get normalized y coordinates on an object that only go from 0 to 1 (or -1 to 1 just remap) but trying to normalize the object position just makes it so the magnitude is 1 and gets a weird y position. Is there a way I could get the top of the object and the bottom of the object or like the lowest and highest vertice and use those? How would I access that?

digital vector
#

You'd have to pass the remap info the material I believe

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I don't think object dimensions are passed to shaders

grand jolt
#

Hi, I made a water shader but I do not know how to use it in the new project. Please help me.

tame topaz
#

@grand jolt You made it, did you?

meager pelican
#

@misty flameYou could put an AABB in an instanced shader's instance-data. Or just min/max Y if that's all you need. But you'd have to have it passed into the shader, and depending on the pipeline that isn't always easy...I'm still unsure about URP and instancing data.
Another way is to do instancing manually. Assign each object an index in, say, uv4 or something, and then pass the per-instance data in a CBUFFER. Which is basically what the engine is supposed to do anyway. But SRP batching and instancing was a problem last I knew, at least with Shader Graph. So it all depends.

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@keen patioThat is how you do it. What is the question?

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@silk skySee answer to @misty flameabove. You want instance-specific data. As far as how....depends on the pipeline, but you should be able to make per-object material instances in C# if you want to.

misty flame
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By instance-specific data, do you mean a way to simulate having multiple materials with the same shader and different inputs but with only one material?

meager pelican
#

Another way to phrase that is: Each object has it's own "special data". So for colors, one is blue, one red, one yellow, one gold. But there's only one material and one shader.
So somehow you have to have object 0 look up theColor[0], object 1 look up theColor[1], ... and the shader uses that for color. Somehow if you need unique stuff per instance, that's what you have to pass. The thing is, if you don't or can't use Unity's instancing mechanism, you have to stuff some data into every damn vertext.

What you really want is the instance-id for the current mesh. But that's why it's mutually-exclusive with batching, which combines meshes into one big mesh. So you see stats in the profiler (maybe stats) window separately for instancing and batching.

timid minnow
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Does anyone know of a custom function for shader graph to sample the motion vectors texture? (HDRP)

grand jolt
#

?

tame topaz
#

If you made it, you must know how to use it. They go hand in hand.

silk sky
meager pelican
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That works. 🙂

silk sky
#

Surely better performance-wise than instantiating a material for each obj

grand jolt
#

Just build it here

Screenshot_90.png
grand jolt
misty flame
#

Yeah I only needed one object to have the shader so I just passed in some values and I'm good but the per instance stuff looks useful so I'll look at that thanks

meager pelican
tame topaz
silk sky
meager pelican
#

It is by mat in Standard pipeline. But by shader in SRP.

grand jolt
tame topaz
grand jolt
#

How to use it in another project

regal stag
#

You would need to rewrite it using built-in shader code (ShaderLab & CGPROGRAM stuff)

timid minnow
grand jolt
regal stag
timid minnow
misty flame
#

Why is a ":" used when you're grabbing mesh data in a shader? Like float4 vertex : POSITION;

meager pelican
#

Those are "semantics". They bind hardware things the GPU knows, to variable names you use.
Like the GPU requires that POSITION because it's part of its rasterization routines.

misty flame
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Oh that makes sense thanks

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so the : is just to make it stand out against a normal instantiation

meager pelican
#

Well, it's a declaration, but yeah. It's the syntax for doing such per the language rules.

#

It's "tying them together".

shadow locust
bitter forge
#

Using Append buffers whats a good approach if i have an unknown count? Do these resize?

meager pelican
#

Well, you should have a known max count FOR THE FRAME. But append buffers are for adding dynamically. So you can add 0 to MAX items to it. That's what the append does.

grand jolt
#

hey, how can i change the position of a sprite(flipbook), relativ to another texture( inside the shader) besides tiling and ofset? cheers

bitter forge
#

@meager pelican so the same limits as any list given you don't know the size allocation.

grand jolt
late frost
#

anyone know how to filter a cubemap? I'm using it to calculate heights in a compute shader but when getting really up close everything get's pretty blocky. I can't find almost anything on google.

unknown.png
#

It's mapped on a standard quadsphere

grand jolt
late frost
# grand jolt like LOD?

That sounds right. I tried texCUBElod but maybe I'm using it wrong. 1 sec let me try to recount my issue with that

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Right so when I do that, I get a strange error:

TextureCube<float> mars;
samplerCUBE sampler_mars;

float GetNoise(float x, float y, float z) {
    return texCUBElod(sampler_mars, float4(float3(x,y,z), 2));
}

Error:
Compute shader (Mars): Property (sampler_mars) at kernel index (0) is not set

As far as I understand, I only need to set "mars" and "sampler_mars" will automatically be set?

# 
computeShaderModule.shader.SetTexture(kernelID, "mars", texture);
#

That's what happens when I use texCUBElod.

meager pelican
#

Huh. And kernelID = 0?

late frost
#

As far as I'm aware yeah, it should be:

#pragma kernel ComputePositions

[numthreads(256, 1, 1)] void ComputePositions(uint3 id
                                              : SV_DispatchThreadID) {
    dataBuffer[id.x] *= scale;
    dataBuffer[id.x] = rotate_vector(rotation, dataBuffer[id.x]);

    dataBuffer[id.x] += trPosition;
    dataBuffer[id.x] = normalize(dataBuffer[id.x]); 
    float height = GetNoise(dataBuffer[id.x].x, dataBuffer[id.x].y, dataBuffer[id.x].z);
    dataBuffer[id.x] *= radius;
    dataBuffer[id.x] -= trPosition;

    dataBuffer[id.x] *= (noiseDiv + height) / noiseDiv;
}

var kernelID = computeShaderModule.shader.FindKernel("ComputePositions");

and it does return 0 when debugging.

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The input positions are just object space vertex positions

meager pelican
#

You have to set for each kernel ID properties right before you dispatch.

#

But I'm not seeing the error.

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You have the right idea, IMO.

#

Anyway, LOD 2 will be blockier than LOD 0

grand jolt
meager pelican
#

IIRC there's a macro/function for sampling cube maps. They're usually encoded too.

#

Spherical harmonics stuff.

late frost
#

Ok I will see what else I can find. Thank you for your help

meager pelican
bitter forge
#

@meager pelican thanks. I've set an estimated max for now. This is my first go at compute shaders, my only concern at the moment is the speed of copying buffered data to the gpu to be processed but it might just be fine, i heard downloading tends to be a bottleneck.

meager pelican
#

Yeah, it's designed for up, mostly. But with modern GPU's and GPGPU (like compute shaders) it's gotten better, as I understand it.

bitter forge
late frost
#

Like is there such a thing as bi-cubic filtering but for cubemaps?

late frost
#

Figured it out 🙂

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Converted the coordinates to equirectangular texture coordinates, calculated a bicubic filter and converted the uv's back to normal coordinates in order to get the samples for the filter.

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Not seeing any stretching on poles so far at least.

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Usage:

float SampleCube(TextureCube<float> heightmap, sampler texSampler, float3 pos)
{
  return SampleBicubicCube(heightmap, texSampler, pos);
}
📎 message.txt
#

Nice and smooth 😎

unknown.png
clever saddle
#

Why UV channel's color is colorful like this?

unknown.png
vocal narwhal
#

UV mapped to RG

clever saddle
#

Im new.I dont know.So unity assgins a default color to UV?

#

Like this?

8CD14E26-41B9-4536-9F5F-8DAA28613C6B.jpg
#

I'm so confused .Where should I start with ro learn shader?

vocal narwhal
#

It's just a representation so you can see what is in the UV channel. It's all just numbers, so UV becomes RG (red and green) as they're standard colours

mental bone
#

It really helps if you start thinking of colors as just numbers

clever saddle
#

So R G is actually coordinate X and Y,right?

vocal narwhal
#

U V, whatever you want to call them

#

your graph was correct (except for the y axis label being flipped)

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run the value from G into a Preview node to see it as greyscale

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and again, black is 0, white is 1

clever saddle
#

Yup 🙂

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Btw,what good toturial should I start with?

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Standard shader scripting,Shader Gragh

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I dont know where to start with...

toxic flume
#

Hey, I have big problem about performance with nature tree, speedtree8
All keywords are disabled, instancing is enabled
I see many normal if/else branches, can it be the problem?
Do you know an efficient tree shader for android devices?

meager pelican
#

Mobile in General:
Tile based rendering and lots of trees will be a problem. Because trees (well, leaves) use cutouts. And when you have any form of transparency, including alpha cutout/threshold, it disables the tile optimization routines. The GPU is forced to "blend" the entire quad's area and not reject pixels that are occluded.

As I understand it.

With tile-based hardware, it accumulates all draws into the "tile" in a stack...think of it as drawing all meshes in all tiles (small sub-divisions of the screen) and clipping the pixels that are out of bounds quickly so only the relevant ones are processed much for any given tile. It also does hidden-surface removal. BUT...it cannot reject the "behind" pixels if there's any alpha-usage. AKA transparents or alpha-cutout.

Then there's the issue of tile-memory vs system memory. Tile-based mobile GPU's try to keep info in tile-memory and not have to move it to the "main memory" which is shared with the CPU (because it's mobile, and mobile chips have limited on-board memory). And that operation is slow. Whereas desktop GPU's have gigs of local on-board memory to play with as well as closer-to-core caches.

#

Speed Tree
So ST uses LOD models and multiple materials. This complicates issues somewhat, but it's a good idea in general. The thing is, that per Unity's brief documentation on the topic, you should avoid using trees with lots of LOD on mobile, since the multi-material and multiple LOD issues cause more draw-calls than you'd like.

performance.```
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SpeedTree.html
See also:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-Tree.html
Where you might be able to edit the tree to something simpler that would work better in your use case.

Otherwise, just use billboarded trees that you do yourself, or search the asset store for "mobile trees".
toxic flume
#

Yes, it is cutout and I know it can be problem in low-end devices,perfect

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Efficient tree shaders do not use cutout and instead employ blending?

grand jolt
#

@toxic flume you dont need LOD on mobile devices, since they have a small GPU, you cant implement HD materials on big maps anyway. So youre better of using basic oclusion culling and simple shaders for your game. vfx graph is also not supported, so you have to be creative when it comes to mobile, but theres one big plus point: THEY HAVE SMALL SCREEN 😉 😉

toxic flume
#

It does not work

//SpeedTreeCommon.cginc

 OUT.Alpha = color.a * IN.color.a;
 //clip(OUT.Alpha - 0.3333);  
    OUT.Alpha = step(0.3333,OUT.Alpha);
#

I replace clip with the line above! even when .Alpha=0

# 
  Tags
        {
            "Queue"="Transparent"
            "IgnoreProjector"="True"
            "RenderType"="Transparent"
            "DisableBatching"="LODFading"
        }
        LOD 200
        Cull [_TwoSided]
        ZWrite Off
        ZTest Always
        Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
meager pelican
# toxic flume Efficient tree shaders do not use cutout and instead employ blending?

Blending has nearly the same problems. I see that "solution" all the time, but blending ALSO disables optimizations due to the need to calculate the "behind" pixel that is being blended in.

The best solution on mobile is to not use transparency-related things at all, including alpha-cutouts.
Alas, that requires you to use opaque meshes with leaf-shapes for everything, but it might be faster.

toxic flume
#

I should use trees and can not remove them!

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I use occlusion trees and a bunch of optimization but have problems in that tree shader

meager pelican
#

Basically what the GPU does is...it "knows" the type of shader. And if it "sees" alpha clip/discard instructions OR if it sees any transparency blending, it disables tile optimizations. Which sucks.

#

So switching alpha-clip for blend of 0 alpha isn't necessarily a solution. May depend on hardware, aka YMMV.

toxic flume
#

😦

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What is tile optimization?

meager pelican
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Don't use alpha or clip/discard. Find another way with meshes.

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I'm far from an expert on mobile, though. Maybe others have thoughts.

toxic flume
#

OK, thanks

meager pelican
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In general you'll trade having more opaque triangles for reducing alpha stuff.

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And for speed tree specifically, try the editor from the link above and simplify everything. Fewer materials, low poly, opaque as possible. Or see asset store for other options.
@toxic flume

grand jolt
#

can i only have one rendertexture in use with shadergraph?

amber saffron
toxic flume
#

What is the difference between #ifdef and #if defined()?

regal stag
toxic flume
grand jolt
low lichen
grand jolt
#

can i use a sprite animation via flipbook as a color source in vfx graph? (maybe wrong channel)

meager pelican
grand jolt
#

yeas thnk you, but i dont understand how/if i can/must use a shader for that, or simply just the image that is used to create a flipbook animation in shadergraph. and i just want to use the color of the flipbook. but i will watch the unity tutorial again!

clever saddle
#

I have a question

grand jolt
clever saddle
#

Sorry,My network was broken ;_;

#

Does the G in UV mean V of all the coordinates?

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If I set it as T in the case,edge1 is set to 0.5 and edge2 is set to 0.6

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Then are all the V value of coordinates between 0.5 and 0.6?

amber saffron
amber saffron
clever saddle
#

Ohhh. Got it!

amber saffron
#

If you want to restrict the values, you're searching for the clamp node

clever saddle
#

Thx. I see

worldly drift
#

Does shader graph still lack support for cull front?

regal stag
# worldly drift Does shader graph still lack support for cull front?

Currently yes, though I think the "in-progress" Surface Options feature (https://portal.productboard.com/8ufdwj59ehtmsvxenjumxo82/c/259-urp-surface-options) might change that. Hopefully 2021.2?

URP Surface Options - Unity Platform - Rendering & Visual Effects

In ShaderGraph, you will be able to change surface option settings in your shader and on materials for URP. These options include transparency and blend mode settings (eg: culling options).

worldly drift
#

Good thing I can vote for this "feature" now

regal stag
worldly drift
#

in the case of the raymarching volume this would be more feasible

echo solstice
#

Hello

#

I want to ask something

#

How to arrange a shader lab code? I mean I typed shader without any error but my () {} symbols are not at the same column

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After arranging it worked

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How to arrange the shader code neatly

#

?

distant sleet
#

Hi, question about compute shaders
Lets say in C# I want a function

#

that takes in a width and a height

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and outputs an array, where each element is equal to x+y in a nested for loop

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in this the size of the array is variable

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and its also not returning a texture

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so how would I do this?

shadow locust
#

What part of this is COmpute shader related?

distant sleet
shadow locust
#

the thing that outputs the array is the compute shader?

distant sleet
#

Its obviously not actually width+height but its just an example

distant sleet
#

I dont wanna return a texture, but rather an array (or multiple) of variable sizes

shadow locust
#

I think there's basically two high-level options here

#

Either you used an array of predetermined length for the output

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or you use an AppendBuffer

distant sleet
#

AppendBuffer? lemme look that up

shadow locust
#

Which is a ComputeBuffer with CombuteBufferType Append

distant sleet
#

Yeah I see, thanks a ton!

#

Seems like I can use this

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Im trying to calculate triangles and uvs in a compute shader

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so that I can make a mesh object in unity

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so reutnring an array of triangles and uvs requires this

grand jolt
#

Hey guys. Any idea why I'm getting always black values regardless the UV I use to sample a shadowmap?

 UNITY_DECLARE_SHADOWMAP(_Shadowmap);
            float4 _Shadowmap_ST;

            RWTexture3D<float4> _VoxelVolumeLight : register(u2);

            v2f vert (appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.vertex = UnityObjectToClipPos(v.vertex);
                o.vertexId = v.vertexId;
                return o;
            }

            float4 frag(v2f i) : SV_Target
            {
                //Transforms the SV_VertexID into a 3D index
                uint3 id = GetVoxelCoordinates(i.vertexId);

                //Transforms the 3D index into world-coordinates
                float4 wpos = float4(id * _VoxelSize, 1.0);

                //Gets the shadow coordinate from a single-cascate light
                float3 shadowCoord = mul(unity_WorldToShadow[0], wpos).xyz;

                //Samples the shadow
                float shadow = UNITY_SAMPLE_SHADOW(_Shadowmap, shadowCoord);

                //Gets the final shadow result
                shadow = lerp(_LightShadowData.r, 1.0, shadow);

                //Stores into the voxel data
                _VoxelVolumeLight[id] = shadow;

                return 0.0;
            }
#

_Shadowmap, _VoxelVolumeLight and _VoxelSize are binded correctly

#

unity_WorldToShadow and _LightShadowData are also binded correctly

distant sleet
#

Quick question, how do I set a ComputeBufferType?

#

Computebuffers dont seem to have a function to do that

shadow locust
distant sleet
#

OH so sorry

tranquil bronze
#

How can i get compute shaders to work in urp?

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since on render image doesnt work

shadow locust
tranquil bronze
#

i need to use compute shaders for a different reason, otherwise i would just use a pixel shader

shadow locust
tranquil bronze
#

i want to render it on the screeb

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i tried following a github repo and copied everything but it doesnt work on my urp project'

#

but works in the repos project

#

same version of urp and everything

meager pelican
#

URP/SRP/HDRP have post processing of some kind.

tranquil bronze
#

i have to run the shader multiple times per frame

#

can u do that with a pixel shader? @meager pelican

meager pelican
#

Well, if you want to draw it, say, 2 times....draw 2 quads and run it twice. Maybe a 3rd time to output something to the back buffer. IDK. Just trying to help. You may need at least DX11 though, if you need to write other textures in the pixel shader. IIRC. I should look it up, but....

#

You may have to use a color mask to stop output to the back buffer.

tranquil bronze
#

each pass needs the data from the previous one tho

meager pelican
#

That what the other texture would hold....

#

Some goggle searches are in order. But I think you can do it somehow.

#

Besides, I'd be surprised that URP cannot do it. I mean, there ought to be a way. I should research before shooting off my big fingers.

tranquil bronze
#

i dont really understand this but in shader toy i think you can use buffers to run a shader once, than run the other shader on that data, can u do the same in unity without compute shaders?

meager pelican
tranquil bronze
#

i think this is just for mesh stuff

meager pelican
#

Worth tossing him a buck or two if it helps you.

tranquil bronze
#

not for rendering an image

meager pelican
#

It's running a compute shader, from URP. From what I saw. That much you should be interested in.

tranquil bronze
#

yeah but i need it to render the image from a compute shader onto the screen

meager pelican
#

You need the RESULTS from the compute shader.
Full. Screen. Quad. Look up results, output color. Do a blit (see Graphics.Blit)

#

Or. Have the compute shader output the results directly to the output texture if you can.

tranquil bronze
#

i think i found a way to do it with fragment shader now

#

thanks for the help

digital vector
#

Yo, so i have a weird issue rn with urp

#

I have this bit of code for a custom shader gui

unknown.png
#

It passes the current shader time to the material

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where i then use it for some slight animation

unknown.png
#

When clicking e.g. the activate button, it sets a value of 17k rn

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But the value at which stuff actually happens lies at 5.4k

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aka the time inside the shader is around that value, as opposed to the one i got using Shader.GetGlobalVector

#

Any idea how that happens or how to combat it?

#

When testing in playmode the effect works perfectly fine

#

only edit mode hates me

clever rapids
#

Im trying to replicated the laser shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGd3nYXj1Oc&t=363s. But for some reason my laser texture shows up as solid white and not what it is. I can send in zoomed in images for certain parts of the shader

unknown.png
YouTube
Gabriel Aguiar Prod.
Unity Shader Graph - Laser Beam Tutorial

Unity Shader Graph - Laser Beam VFX Tutorial

In this Shader Graph tutorial we are going to see how to create a simple, but awesome, Laser Beam shader in Unity!

TPS Laser Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbWYc3W43EI&index=29&list=PLpPd_BKEUoYh40LeJXTgA6E53gCMPq3MX

Timeline:

1:10 - Laser Beam Shader
3:42 - Setup the Laser VFX
5:21 -...

▶ Play video
#

The electricity texture im attempting to use, but shows up as solid white

Electricity_Texture.png
regal stag
clever rapids
#

Okay thank you

#

For some reason the image shows up as a straight line

unknown.png
normal spire
#

can you convert a shader you made in blender to unity? or is it better to just make the shader from scratch Inside of unity?

digital vector
smoky bay
#

Hi, hope u all doin' good ! i got a strange problem with my water shader: My PBR graph shader for water is visible trough items, and i can't understand why, i don't even know if it's because of the shader or something else, but, here is the problem, and here is the pbr graph, so even just knowing if the problem is from my pbr or not would greatly help me

unknown.png
normal spire
regal stag
regal stag
# smoky bay Hi, hope u all doin' good ! i got a strange problem with my water shader: My PBR...

My guess would be that the material for that brick textured plane is transparent. Sorting transparent objects correctly can be difficult as it can't rely on the depth buffer and instead just sorts by distance to the GameObject origin. If they should always render in a particular order you can change the Render Queue on each material to force it. But in this case, if it doesn't need to be transparent, make it opaque instead and it should sort correctly.

smoky bay
teal breach
#

Hi all, is there an equivalent to _ScreenParams that takes into account RenderScale? I see _ScaledScreenParams but it's not clear to me what the shader graph equivalent is

regal stag
teal breach
#

_ScaledScreenParams works fine in my hlsl shader, I was wondering if there is a shader graph node equivalent for it

regal stag
#

Don't think there's a node for it no

teal breach
#

eg, in the way there is Screen

#

ty

teal breach
regal stag
# teal breach what is the standard way to expose a parameter like this via shader graph? I mad...

Hmm, it seems to be declared in URP ShaderLibrary/Input.hlsl (which is included by Core.hlsl) so should always be declared afaik, assuming you aren't using HDRP. Maybe it doesn't exist for SG previews though, it's fairly common to have custom functions wrapped in an #ifdef. I'd try something like this (either in string mode, or wrapped in a function definition if using file mode)

Out = float4(0,0,0,0); // (or whatever value you want to give the preview)
#else
Out = _ScaledScreenParams;
#endif
teal breach
#

Thanks @regal stag , that does it!

#

(I've been away and have to remember the quirks of URP...)

lavish oasis
#

Does shader graph v11 have no master node? What is it replaced with?

wary jackal
#

@meager pelican I'm having some issues applying a normal map and I don't know why...

            {
                // i.normal = normalize(UnpackNormal(tex2D(_NormalMap, i.uv)));


                float3 lightDir = _WorldSpaceLightPos0;
                float3 viewDir = normalize(_WorldSpaceCameraPos - i.worldPos);
                float3 lightColor = _LightColor0.rgb;

                float3 albedo = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv).rgb * _Tint.rgb;

                float3 specularTint = albedo * _Metallic;

                float oneMinusReflectivity = 1 - _Metallic;
                albedo = DiffuseAndSpecularFromMetallic(albedo, _Metallic, specularTint, oneMinusReflectivity);
                
                

                // * This is the Blinn reflection model:
                // float3 reflectionDir = reflect(-lightDir, i.normal); 

                // * This is the Blinn-Phong reflection model:
                float3 halfVector = normalize(lightDir + viewDir);

                float4 diffuse = float4(albedo * lightColor * DotClamped(_WorldSpaceLightPos0, i.normal), 1);
                float4 specular = float4(lightColor * specularTint, 1);

                return pow(DotClamped(halfVector, i.normal), _Smoothness * 100) * specular + diffuse;

            }``` 
That's the code, and it works fine when I comment out the first line that unpacks the normal map, but when it's in there everything goes black.
#

Or anyone if you're able to help me ^

umbral panther
#

Is there a document somewhere explaining which extra shader passes/replacements need to be handled integrate a shader (for a mesh in the scene) to work with the Unity PostProcessing Stack?

pastel mason
#

hello everyone, i have a question for stencil shader in Unity. The whitelines are using a shader with stencil. The Log and the Character writes value into the stencil buffer.
Currently I am applying the checkboard effect on the whiteline whenever the stencil reads a higher value in the buffer. However, I only want it to be done for specific type of object (in this case, the log).
Is it possible to do "the line is behind a Log object now, draw it using effect A. It is behind a Character object now, dont draw anything" ?
(im on built-in RP)

noble tree
#

anyone know how to properly sample triplanar normals with shadergraph? in this image i'm expecting something more like the normal strength 0 section in terms of light strength, but instead the material looks like normal strength 1. the light is at a 45 degree angle so it should light both sides equally. im pretty sure my normal texture is fine, but i've included it just in case. and below is the graph where i sample the normal texture

Screen_Shot_2021-06-10_at_12.00.55_AM.png
distant sleet
#

anyone know how I would pass an array of 12 float2s from cs to hlsl?

hushed urchin
#

I'm trying with a very basic compute shader read data, but it doesn't read me any values.
Basically

RWStructuredBuffer<float> output;

[numthreads(THREADS_PER_GROUP_X, THREADS_PER_GROUP_Y,1)]
void CSSimulate (uint3 thread_id : SV_DispatchThreadID, uint3 group_thread_id : SV_GroupThreadID)
{
    output[thread_id.y * 128 + thread_id.x] = -1.f;
}

-----
// init
cOutputBuffer = new ComputeBuffer(columns * rows, sizeof(float), ComputeBufferType.Structured, ComputeBufferMode.Dynamic);
temperatureComputeShader.SetBuffer(0, "output", cOutputBuffer);

// Dispatch (col = 128, rows = 128)
var groupsX = Mathf.CeilToInt(columns / (float)threadsPerGroupX);
var groupsY = Mathf.CeilToInt(rows / (float)threadsPerGroupY);
temperatureComputeShader.Dispatch(0, groupsX, groupsY, 1);

// Read
float[] testData = new float[columns * rows];
cOutputBuffer.GetData(testData, 0, 0, columns * rows);

Any idea what I'm doing wrong here?
(found it, need Immutable flag)

grand jolt
#

why cant i use a gradient for alpha clipping? the transition is not smooth like expected. it looks like the alpha channel can only deal with floored values (int). is that true?

#

so either its visible or not, but nothing in between?

#

are there even responders here? i only see questions....i thought this is the official unity server

grand jolt
regal stag
grand jolt
#

ahh ok

#

thnks cyan

regal stag
# distant sleet anyone know how I would pass an array of 12 float2s from cs to hlsl?

You'd need to use a float array or pack it into a Vector4 array as Unity only allows arrays of those types. This article has some info about setting up arrays : https://www.alanzucconi.com/2016/10/24/arrays-shaders-unity-5-4/

In short, define float _Floats[24]; in hlsl. Set in C# using material.SetFloatArray("_Floats", array); (or Shader.SetGlobalFloatArray).
Alternatively I think you might be able to pack those floats into a Matrix4x4.

distant sleet
#

But

#

shouldnt it be a 2d array

#

like [[float1,float2], [float1,float2]]

#

or should it be

#

float1,float2,float1,float2

#

and itll auto assign

meager pelican
#

@wary jackalWhat does your normal map look like? Is it the usual "redish-blueish" map?
P.S.
you shouldn't need to normalize it, nor do you have to store it back into the v2f struct. So:
half3 normal = UnpackNormal(tex2D(_BumpMap, i.uv));
Finally, output the normal as a color onto the object so you can debug it.

regal stag
# distant sleet shouldnt it be a 2d array

Unity doesn't allow sending in an array of 2 components from C#, only Floats or Vector4s. I think you need to change your array on both sides to float or float4/Vector4.

distant sleet
#

So wait

#

Should I do something like

#

instead of

#

float2 offsets[12]

#

float offsetsX[12]

#

float offsetsY[12]

regal stag
distant sleet
#

and combine them?

regal stag
#

You can pack them into a single array of 24 size. float _Offsets[24]

distant sleet
#

Yeah exactly and add 12 for the index

regal stag
#

Depends how you organise the data but sure. I'd pack it like x,y,x,y,x,y.. and when you read it, use i and i+1

distant sleet
#

Yeah thats better

#

Thanks

#

and i += 2

regal stag
#

Yep

regal stag
meager pelican
regal stag
meager pelican
regal stag
lavish oasis
meager pelican
#

Nah, it's a good thing.
Lets you see what variables go into the vertex stage vs the fragment stage, rather than relying on behind-the-scenes magic.

rich arrow
#

How to convert SRP custom shaders to URP?

meager pelican
#

By hand?

rich arrow
meager pelican
#

lol

rich arrow
#

Not in built shaders

meager pelican
#

Yes you did. My bad.

#

But URP is SRP.

#

So now IDK what you mean.

regal stag
# rich arrow How to convert SRP custom shaders to URP?

I assume by SRP you are referring to "standard" which is not the correct name. It's built-in pipeline. SRP is scriptable render pipeline which is a basis for URP and HDRP.

Any custom shaders need rewriting. URP Shader code is a bit different (and doesn't support surface shaders), it's usually easiest to recreate it in Shader Graph.

rich arrow
rich arrow
regal stag
#

It's a fairly common misconception

meager pelican
#

Then I got it right the first time. 😉 No worries.
Like Cyan says, the terminology often gets confused.

#

They have an "upgrade materials" routine, but it likely won't work, so you're back to "by hand".

distant sleet
#

Need a bit of shading advice

#

Im making procedural terrain and obviously now its pretty plasticky

#

I also have a noise map of the terrain

#

That I can make higher res

#

how would you all go about making the surfaces rouger using this texture?

meager pelican
#

I'd use two textures. One with a large offset, one with a smaller "grain" offset. And add.

#

And if they're not already, you should make sure they're tileable.

primal dagger
#

How can I make a shadergraph that changes texture based on the height of the vertex

#

On the y axis

meager pelican
#

By "changes texture" you mean what? Changes color, picks from different textures? Blends?
Got an example?

primal dagger
#

I'm trying to texture a terrain based on height, like the top of the mesh will have snow and the bottom will have grass

#

So basically I'd like it to blend between Textures2Ds based on height

distant sleet
meager pelican
#

Add the two results, that come from two textures. So you have your texture #1 that has "big changes" and your texture #2 for small grain stuff. And it's just a small offset. And you add the two.

So you might be adding a 2.359 Y offset and a 0.0419 offset and end up with the total, per pixel.

#

And you can make sliders to scale it (multiply it by some scalar value) for "intensity".

tired canyon
#

also

#

a normal map

meager pelican
#

Or you can just use the one texture and sample it differently.

tired canyon
#

to get rid of the fine reflections

#

would probably help

distant sleet
#

Im back

distant sleet
#

vertices is an issue

distant sleet
#

How would I convert this b&w image to a normal map? Know any resources?

tired canyon
#

I wouldn't

distant sleet
#

Alright, I'll find a few

tired canyon
#

I would just grab a normal map and tile it

distant sleet
#

the idea of "grainier" detail sounds good

distant sleet
#

because my terrain isnt all rock

tired canyon
#

well you could blend between different ones

#

based on the height

distant sleet
#

Yeah, thats a great idea

#

But

#

Blending between normal maps..

#

just seems like it wouldnt work but idk anything about normal maps

#

I'll check them out and see if organically blending would give me a good result

tired canyon
#

I'd start just tiling one

distant sleet
#

Yeah Ill start wiv that

tired canyon
#

and remember that it's mixing with the normals already there

distant sleet
#

one issue is rn the water is part of the mesh but Im changing that

#

Already makes a big differene

#

But I dont think its tiling

meager pelican
#

You have to transform the uv based on tiling/offset settings. There's a macro for it.
Google/research something like "TransformTex".

tired canyon
#

I would blend multiple together actually

#

You could have a bigish normal map + a super fine detailed one

meager pelican
#

But if you're doing vertex displacement, you MIGHT want to sample 3 points and calc an offset with epsilon and then calc a new-normal. Depends on what you're doing.

#

Then you don't need a normal map, but you have to incur the cost of 3 samples vs 1. Which if you do them ahead might not be too bad.

distant sleet
distant sleet
distant sleet
#

Isnt that just what pre-generated normals are

#

for each tri it creates a normal facing outwards?

#

But then gain, I cant enable flat shading so maybe unity doesnt do that?

meager pelican
#

Well, they're pre-calced. But yes. But you're changing the polygon with vertex displacement and faking a normal with a normal-map read.

So you have your 1 vert displacement texture read, and your 1 normal texture read (and unpack). And for the cost of 1 extra texture read, you can dump the normal map and just calc the new normal that resulted from your vert offsets in the first place. So it's up to you. I'd actually benchmark both.

distant sleet
#

I see

meager pelican
#

Unity can do flat shading (it's about shader calcs)

#

There's several ways.

distant sleet
#

Interesting, once I do more of this project and get to the optimiziation phase

#

I'll definetly try this approach

meager pelican
#

But do you want flat shading, like low poly stuff?

distant sleet
#

Yeah, the map isnt tiling rn

distant sleet
#

Anyways, let me look up TransformTex

meager pelican
distant sleet
#

oh god I know nothing about these types eof shaders haha

#

Alright, hopefully I can get it to work

tired canyon
#

shaders are black magic

distant sleet
#

yeah lmao

#

bruh i was doing noise in c sharp

#

and it was taking a bit for high res so I was like "ah well its a pretty complex function makes sense"

#

moved it to a compute shader

#

litereally instant

#

what is this black magic

#

4k texture in like a milisecond

tired canyon
#

makes more sense when you think about how many "cores" a gpu has

#

long as you have them doing the same instruction

distant sleet
#

yeah exactly

#

tons of threads

#

good for textures obvi

tired canyon
#

baby threads

#

threads that don't like doing anyhting unless it is exactly what their sibling threads are doing

distant sleet
#

I have no clue how to start wiht this transform_tex thing lmao

#

bruh

#

never written a shader

tired canyon
#

can you just use shader graph?

distant sleet
tired canyon
#

pretty sure this kind of thing is very easily done in shadergraph

meager pelican
#

Texture reads are slow. Math is fast. But since you have an input texture dependency, you have it. That's the way it is.
The idea is to try and do some calcs or something after the texture read(s) that aren't dependent on the results and let the core not be stalled off as long, let it get some other work done. So do the read at the "top" and then do other non-dependent stuff, and then use the results.

distant sleet
#

maybe with a transform n ode

distant sleet
tired canyon
#

so you can kick off a read

distant sleet
#

Useful for my use case atleast

tired canyon
#

but then do other things

#

before using the return?

distant sleet
#

Seeing as the entire point of my project is to generate textures and deform surfaces

tired canyon
#

and it'll speed it up

meager pelican
#

Sure. But if the "other things' depend on the results of the read, it has to wait for it.
I'm pretty sure shader compiler optimizer check for some of this, but I'd try to code it the smart way, in case you run into a dumb optimizer on some hardware.

tired canyon
#

yea that seems like a pretty easy thing to do

#

reorder instructions

distant sleet
#

i have no clue how to make shaders to such an extent

#

I cnat even find the shadergraph stuff in the creat menu

#

arent there supposed to be graph stuff

#

bruh

regal stag
#

Can only use Shader Graph in URP or HDRP atm

distant sleet
#

do compute shaders work there?

#

later i may move the stuff voer

tired canyon
#

I'm pretty sure you can use them with URP too

#

but you can't on android?

#

there's an asterisk

ocean wharf
#

how could i make everything in the scene render with a shader? i have a simple psx vertex warble shader, do i need to apply it to every single material or is there a simpler way about this

shadow locust
#

You can use a layer mask and it can override the material of the renderers in those layers

#

Not sure if you'd consider that "simple" or not

regal stag
#

It's important to note that the URP override material stuff completely replaces the previous material. Textures and other properties won't carry over.

If you're in built-in RP, there's replacement shaders which can carry over textures/properties, assuming the new shader uses the same references, so that might be closer to what they want. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-ShaderReplacement.html

waxen totem
#

anybody care to help cobble together a shader?

im trying to make a skybox like shader that displays a flat image in the background that works with an orthegraphic camera... much like this one:

https://gist.github.com/aras-p/3d8218ef5d96d5984019

^^ this works as expected. I was hoping to have it scroll as the camera moves, based on X and Y properties you can set on the material. this shader does just that when i set the rendertype to background:

https://pastebin.com/SFhM1JjW

^^ for all intents and purposes, this one works, but since im using an ortheographic camera, the edges have a "fisheye" effect. How can i mod it so its flat on the edges like the first shader?

Gist
Unity flat skybox picture shader

Unity flat skybox picture shader. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Pastebin
Shader "Unlit/ParallaxTexture"{ Properties { _MainTex ...

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.

bold cave
#

Hey guys, im starting out with shaders and trying to make a good looking skybox shader, but there is like a seam going around the skybox.
Any way to get rid of it? I know i'm projecting a texture onto a sphere, but i will happily accept some overlap instead of this awful seam.

Thanks!

waxen totem
#

is yout texture set to clamp or repeat?

#

i had this problem in the past, i cant remember which is which but i remember that solved it for me

bold cave
#

umm, im creating it inside the shader graph, so don't really know

waxen totem
#

ahh.. ive never played with shader graph so im not sure, sorry

#

if youre using a texture it sould be on the import settings of the image itself

bold cave
#

oh okay, thanks! if anyone finds a way to set it for a procedurally generated one i would love to know it!

regal stag
bold cave
#

Thanks!

grand jolt
#

Hello, In most article i read people cull front face (instead of back) while drawing outlines with the help of stencil test.
Does culling front instead of back face have any advantage in this case ?

regal stag
# grand jolt Hello, In most article i read people cull front face (instead of back) while dra...

The common "inverted hull" style of outlines uses Cull Front as otherwise you'd just get a slightly inflated version of the mesh covering up the main pass.

If you're using it with some additional stencil operations though, it might not be required. e.g. The main pass can render to the stencil buffer, and the outline tests against it to prevent any outlines appearing over it. Using either cull option would work then and I doubt there's much difference which is used.

wary jackal
#

@meager pelican I think it might be messed up? The red is in the wrong place I think...

It also still goes black after I put the normal map in, so I think that's the problem. However, I have been able to use these normal maps before so idk what the problem is.

WaterNormalMap.png
grand jolt
timid minnow
#

Is there a way to increase distortion at the edges of the screen in HDRP?

unknown.png
#

Feels like I'd have to plug something into the Distortion node

regal stag
pastel mason
noble tree
#

here's all of my import settings

Screen_Shot_2021-06-10_at_10.21.36_AM.png
regal stag
noble tree
#

still no luck 😦 i've also tried different normal spaces in the main stack + graph settings, but tangent is still the best so far

#

flipping the light around 180 degrees on the y axis "works", but i wish i didn't have to worry about that

tranquil bronze
#

how can you define a constant float

wary jackal
#

@acoustic bay does it kinda go black and look weird when you don't do that?

tranquil bronze
#

i tried using this
static const float PI = 3.14159265f;

#

but i get an error

noble tree
#

it's definitely something to do with colorspace conversion 🤔 i changed the project to Linear lighting and it works as expected, but i find Linear hard to work with for colors 😦

noble tree
rustic dagger
tranquil bronze
#

yeah i

wary jackal
#

nvm, I'm having problems with normal maps and it kinda works when the lighting is in rotated

unknown.png
noble tree
#

nothing that intense, but kinda

regal stag
noble tree
#

aha!

#

i fixed it!

wary jackal
#

What did you do?

tranquil bronze
#

that works thankyou

noble tree
#

i reexported my normal map texture from Quixel with the normal channels set to Linear

Screen_Shot_2021-06-10_at_10.41.21_AM.png
wary jackal
#

I think ima check that out

noble tree
wary jackal
#

wait what is quixel? lol

noble tree
#

it's the tool i use to make my textures

#

https://quixel.com/mixer

Quixel
Quixel Mixer

Simple and quick creation of anything you can imagine. Create photorealistic, tileable, materials in seconds with powerful mixing and painting.

wary jackal
#

oh, quixel mixer

#

as shoot, I'm on linux so I can't download it .-.

noble tree
#

i think it's possible to convert gamma to linear by doing
pow(sampledTexColor, 2.2)

#

or maybe it was 0.4545

wary jackal
#

I mean, that makes stuff look cool but it doesn't really work. I'm probably doing it wrong though

regal stag
wary jackal
#

yeah. sure

# 
fixed4 frag (v2f i) : SV_Target
            {
                half3 normal = UnpackNormal(tex2D(_NormalMap, i.uv));

                float3 lightDir = _WorldSpaceLightPos0;
                float3 viewDir = normalize(_WorldSpaceCameraPos - i.worldPos);
                float3 lightColor = _LightColor0.rgb;

                float3 albedo = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv).rgb * _Tint.rgb;

                float3 specularTint;
                float oneMinusReflectivity;
                albedo = DiffuseAndSpecularFromMetallic(albedo, _Metallic, specularTint, oneMinusReflectivity);
                
                

                // * This is the Blinn reflection model:
                // float3 reflectionDir = reflect(-lightDir, i.normal); 

                // * This is the Blinn-Phong reflection model:
                float3 halfVector = normalize(lightDir + viewDir);

                float4 diffuse = float4(albedo * lightColor * DotClamped(_WorldSpaceLightPos0, normal), 1);
                float4 specular = float4(lightColor * specularTint, 1);

                return pow(DotClamped(halfVector, normal), _Smoothness * 1000) * specular + diffuse;

            }
            ENDCG
        }```
#

It's too long so I only sent the fragment shader

regal stag
#

Okay, so the normal map will be in tangent space and needs to be transformed into world before it can be compared with the light direction. I think when using a surface shader it can handle all that automatically but if you want to use vert/frag you'll need to do it manually.

This tutorial goes over normal mapping & tangent space : https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/rendering/part-6/
There's also kinda an example on this page : https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-VertexFragmentShaderExamples.html (under Environment reflection with a normal map heading, if you Ctrl+F "bump" you'll find the code).

#

@wary jackal

wary jackal
#

tysm

#

Oh lmao, I'm on part 4 of the catlikecoding tutorial

wary jackal
#

@regal stag I have yet another question. In the code above, everything is darker than I feel like it should be. The line albedo = DiffuseAndSpecularFromMetallic(albedo, _Metallic, specularTint, oneMinusReflectivity); appears to do this, however, without it I can get some really bright reflections that don't look good. Any suggestions?

meager pelican
#

@wary jackal


        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;```
This is "similar to blinn-phong" per this set of examples: 
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-SurfaceShaderLightingExamples.html
You don't have to have a surface shader, that's just the example set.  See about half way down for "LightingSimpleSpecular".  That calc is a bit different than your current one.   Something to try.
#

P.S. "s" is their surface struct that has things like the normal and uv in it.

#

The params are
(SurfaceOutput s, half3 lightDir, half3 viewDir, half atten)

wary jackal
#

what do the letters stand for? like h, diff, nh, and c?

#

I assume diff is diffuse but idk the others

meager pelican
#

c is the resulting color.
diff is the diffuse light before specular (N dot L with a max 0 function).
nh is the normal half-vector.
spec is the specular amount/result.
So they take the lightcolor X the albedo color X the diffuse amount, and then add the light-color * the specular reflection amount to it and then attenuate the whole mess.

wary jackal
#

Yeah that makes sense

#

What's the const 48.0 for?

meager pelican
#

Yeah, I hate magic numbers like that.
I'll have to look it up in a real shader. Sec.

#

I just thought it would be a good test for you to try out and see if your calc is messed up, or your normal map is messed up.

#

What it looks like that 48 is...is they just hard-coded the specular value you'd set in the shader.
In another shader, this is for the mobile-bump-mapped-specular, they do it this way:
fixed spec = pow (nh, s.Specular*128) * s.Gloss;

#

So there's a scalar there for the specular amount like you'd set on a material (the s.gloss) and there's specuclar color with a power function. That one they premultiplied above and came up with a magic number of 48 and left gloss at 1 I guess.

#

But in the other example, they just made it some constant for demonstration purposes.

light epoch
#

would it be possible to have a volume that isnt visible but colors other objects?

#

like, imagine the sphere isnt visible but the part of the cube in the sphere is a different color

unknown.png
#

so close

unknown.png
meager pelican
#

Do you only want the intersection of the two to show, or all of the cubic object?

#

Are these regular meshes?

light epoch
#

all of the cube, different color on the intersection

#

and yeah just regular meshes

meager pelican
#

I think you're looking for a stencil operation. This will probably make your head hurt if you haven't seen it before, but you can get started on thinking about it and researching:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-Stencil.html
I'd draw the invisible sphere first in just the stencil mask, and then the cube's shader would be smart and change the color due to a sphere being there, but you'll have to check depth somehow.

I think. 😉

light epoch
#

yeah im looking at that rn and my head does indeed hurt

#

but i cant figure out how to use it for what i want

meager pelican
#

The trick is depth range. Because a sphere right in front of the camera isn't necessarily intersecting everything behind it. That's why I said you have to deal with 3D space and also deal with depth/stencil.

Or you could cheat.

How many spheres?

#

in the scene at the same time?

#

Tell me one....please tell me one (or a few).

light epoch
#

well what im going for is um

#

i wrote this tutorial but i can do better

#

i wanna make the cylinders generated

#

instead of like, just being there

#

recolor the mesh they are on top of

meager pelican
#

I'm not following that. That looks a lot link either an outline shader or a wireframe shader, but I don't see what it has to do with spheres and I don't see cylinders.

light epoch
#

well yes its an outline but

#

the outline is a bunch of cylinders generated along each edge

#

and id like the cylinders to be invisible except where they are touching the wall

#

atm u can see they come out

unknown.png
meager pelican
#

I see.
The top pic in your article looks to be closer to what you're doing.
OK. Hmmm. And it's multi colored outlines.

light epoch
#

well

#

its one color

#

with a bloom effect

meager pelican
#

Holoball isn't, it has red/blue/whatever color outlines

#

Anyway, what you're after is cool.

mental bone
#

Why cant you just use a emission texture? I dont want to be rude just asking.

meager pelican
#

Your samples look cool. But IDK if using cylinders is the way to do it.

light epoch
#

oh i see what youre saying about multi color

#

thats not what i really care about

light epoch
hushed urchin
#

Anyone can explain why global scope const floats in compute buffers are 0 value when defined otherwise?

light epoch
mental bone
# light epoch wdym

I mean you can place a texture in the shader that emits hdr color that blooms

light epoch
#

uh

mental bone
#

You just unwrap your mesh. Draw white lines or colored line where you want them and its good to go

light epoch
#

well

#

what i have now is simpler than that

mental bone
#

Unless we are talking about procedural meshes I dont see why it wont work.

light epoch
#

i can make outlines with a button press

mental bone
#

Slaping a texture on is the simplest way to go. Thats how I would do it. Shaders and line renderers like this will just sap performanve for no good reason

light epoch
#

my game wont have very large maps

#

its a portal style puzzle game

meager pelican
#

Sure.
But you can do edge detection in a shader too.

#

😉

light epoch
#

i tried that

meager pelican
#

Didn't work?

light epoch
#

worked until there were two overlapping objects

#

i also tried wireframe

#

worked until i resized the mesh

meager pelican
#

OK, you'd need a post process detecting edges in screen space I think. Wireframe resize should work for wireframe, but you want to eliminate adjacent triangle lines.

#

So you don't really want wireframe.

light epoch
#

i found one that did that

#

i cant use the post processing package because another part of my game doesnt support it

meager pelican
#

Did you find anything using derivatives?

light epoch
#

no idea what that means

meager pelican
#

The idea is to figure out where an "edge" is by tracking changes to the normal vector. So corners would have lines. It's line shader, a type of outline I suppose. Hang on.

light epoch
#

sorry if youre pulling out your hair over me right now lol

#

i dont even know what the pragma means in shaders

#

like i know literally nothing besides the color and cull

#

and i cant even find where the color is actually applied in a simple shader

meager pelican
#

Look at this from here:

2Q.png
light epoch
#

oh that looks perfect

meager pelican
#

So the black is added by a shader.

#

It's often done in toon shading.

#

Then you could blur it.

#

It's edge detection.

#

Sec, let me get you a link.

#

You'll have to digest all this....stuff...discussion.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/image-effect-edge-detect-normals-colours-rel.310280/

But note here first, and see post #4 :
https://forum.unity.com/threads/shader-to-draw-edges.535599/

Now, I think the immoral bglous is correct, that you'd have to either post process it, or stuff some attributes into the mesh vert data. BUT...the good news is you're already processing the mesh anyway. 😉 So you might just be able to stuff something into vert colors or maybe UV3 or whatever. (Check for overlap with lightmap UVs and such).

Unity Forum
Image Effect: Edge Detect Normals Colours [rel]

(Now updated to work up to 5.4.0f3)
As I was working on my project, I was looking into edge detecting and the current image effects edge detection...

Unity Forum
Shader To Draw Edges

I have solid models like chair, table. I want to draw just edges with a shader. I want to write my own shader. What is the idea to draw edges for a...

light epoch
#

oh boy ill try to get that through my tiny brain

meager pelican
#

I like your article and the look of the game, and teh creativity of your solution. Your brain isn't tiny at all.

light epoch
#

thank you

meager pelican
#

And what it's probably doing in the shaders is a derivative of the screen space normal vector or something. IDK, I didn't dig into it much.

#

So you'll have "issues" with things like line width.

#

You're welcome. Looks cool, keep up the good work.

light epoch
#

well the top thread you sent uses the old image effects package

#

ive actually followed that already

#

i downloaded an old version

#

and for some reason it just wouldnt work

meager pelican
#

Keep in mind that a "post process" is "just a blit". 😉

#

Done at the right time.

light epoch
#

my brain hurts too bad right now

#

im gonna see what i can do with the cylinders first lmao

#

ill save those threads tho

meager pelican
#

OK, I'd research "intersection shader" if you haven't already.
There's ways.

In your original question, you asked about "a sphere" and that's easy...because it's a signed distance function from a center via a radius. So any pixel who has a world space position within a sphere (and there could be an array of spheres) could know what color it was supposed to be (glow or not).

light epoch
#

yeah i probably shouldve started with my actual goal immediately

meager pelican
#

But what you really want is an edge.

#

S'OK

light epoch
#

i almost have what im going for

#

the red wont turn transparent

#

i used this

#

https://kylewbanks.com/blog/creating-overlap-underwater-night-vision-effects-in-shader-graph

Kyle W. Banks | Software Developer
Creating Overlap Shader Effects, Such as Underwater and Night Visio...

In some of my more recent posts I began a series where I’d recreate effects from popular games using Shader Graph in Unity. The first of these was to create the static effect when a character receives damage in the excellent Axiom Verge. Well just a couple posts in I’ve decided to break from that theme and instead h...

#

got it

#

aww its not exactly what i wanted

#

good enough tho

light epoch
#

found a perfect one omg

toxic flume
#

Two Image UI are inside one sprite atlas, I can see it in frame debugger too but they are in two separate draw calls, why?
Default UI material, one canvas
It is not guaranteed "always all sprites in one spriteatlas and one canvas take one draw call"?

full salmon
#

I’ve got a skybox shader that looks like a real-ish sky which fades out 100m in the air to reveal a wireframe dome - kind of an “unfinished simulation” thing. At the moment the dome is just a tiled texture, but I’d like to change it to be a wireframe of a geodesic dome. I’m in the middle of code to generate those triangles at the moment, which I can then turn into a mesh. Is there some way I can get the sky to render the fine mesh first and then the skybox?

meager pelican
#

Skybox is already AFTER the opaque pass, if that's your question. But if you put the mesh-dome beyond the the far-plane of the camera, you won't be impressed. 😉

#

Skybox draws at far-plane, basically.

meager pelican
#

The z-pos might be due to transparency sort-order issues.

inner idol
#

having an opacity problem, in unity the hair is opaque but in some vrchat worlds, it is transparent. It is using a custom shader that has no alpha, is set to opaque, with a texture that has no transparency, what else can I check? I've been trying to solve this for a few days now

unknown.png
meager pelican
#

So it's kind of grey and ghosty? 😄

inner idol
#

it is, but only in some worlds sometimes 😂

#

it also doesn't create a shadow so the character's shadow looks bald

meager pelican
#

What do you mean "has no alpha"?

#

What is the texture format?

inner idol
#

the texture is RGB, not RGBA

tame topaz
#

Show the material for it?

meager pelican
#

Well, do you have an option to use RGBA? Maybe some forums are converting it to RGBA and putting .5 in alpha.
SWAG.

tame topaz
#

Maybe the world is doing some custom rendering on white materials. Have you tried another colour?

#

I have no idea how VRC works and how and what worlds are able to control.

inner idol
#

VRC worlds seem to have an odd amount of control

#

I asked in a few VRC discords but they said I should ask here

inner idol
#

every color is transparent :(

meager pelican
#

Or maybe just output a float4/fixed4 with 1 in alpha and see what happens when it is stored to the RGB texture.

inner idol
#

I have tried outputting float4/fixed4 with 1 in alpha and it is still transparent, how would I store it in an RGB texture? sorry I don't normally use unity, my friend asked me to write a shader for them

grand jolt
#

Does anyone here know of a two sided shader for VRM avatars in Unity?

inner idol
inner idol
grand jolt
#

@inner idol I will definitely try this, thank you so much. I have been looking everywhere for something like this. ❤️

inner idol
#

👍 😁

#

two sided can also be called "cull disabled", normally culling hides the front or back face of a mesh, you might have better luck looking for that

grand jolt
inner idol
#

Happy to help! 😁

toxic flume
#

Also, somewhere else, when I use mask component, drawcall increases by two

#

Another question, I have several pickup items
Suppose ten type of weapons
One weapon has a texture but can have different colors (4 colors)
Each weapon has 3 LODs and two or three meshes, body, magazine, attachment
I have doubt I should use static batching technique or GPU instancing with material property block (Color)
If I use GPU instancing, static batching breaks
In one view, I can see many pickup items maybe 30-45 weapons with different types and colors
Platform: Android device

meager pelican
# grand jolt Does anyone here know of a two sided shader for VRM avatars in Unity?

IDK, but I assume you know that setting will show up on the material in the inspector if it is an option in the shader.
But....there's implications to two-sided rendering and you'll have to handle them.

IDK Jack about VRM imports/models though. One way is to decide on flipping the normals with VFACE in a custom shader. Another is to do two draw passes, one for the back, and the other for the front. Which can be tricky if 2 objects overlap. The third way would be for the models to be generated 2 sided (double triangles).

toxic flume
#

One scenario:
AK47 LOD1 red and AK47 LOD0 red on the floor -> they can be batched by static batching, they have same material but different meshes
AK47LOD0 color red and AK47LOD0 color yellow->they can be batched by GPU instancing, they have same mesh and shader but different material (color)

meager pelican
#

Static batching can suck, use instancing, particularly if you need per-instance data. 😉

#

But each LOD is a different mesh, as you say. So to get any benefit from instancing, you need duplicate meshes in frustum.

#

I forget what pipeline you're using.

toxic flume
#

I see in frame debugger, sometimes batch and sometimes not 😐
You think because they are seen in different views and distances and maybe different LODs, so, they can not be batched because they have different meshes?(GPU instancing)

#

Standard Unity pipeline

#

OK, perfect,

meager pelican
#

Batches, maybe. Batching and instancing tend to work by material in standard, and by shader (even on multiple materials) in SRP.

toxic flume
#

Unfortunately we do not use SRP

meager pelican
#

That's not always unfortunate right now. I mean, it's new and still growing.

#

You can do things like combine different objects into one material and use a material texture atlas.

toxic flume
#

I did not get it
, you need duplicate meshes in frustum.

#

Also, I think at least for pickup items, I should combine meshes for weapons into one mesh (magazine, body, ..)
They use one material+ one uv

meager pelican
#

Yeah, unless you need an animation to swap the magazine.

toxic flume
#

Both ArmorBox LOD 0+ both same material and shader, even same color but not batch (GPU instancing)
Only doors can be batched!!!

Shot_0006.png
meager pelican
#

Right. It tells you why it cannot instance "Rendering different meshes or sub-meshes with GPU instancing". Like I was saying, you need more than one copy of the same mesh to make instancing worthwhile.

toxic flume
#

I think it is about triangle count
Because only doors can be batched, they have few triangles

meager pelican
#

No. It says why. In the right hand side in the middle.

toxic flume
#

"more than one copy of the same mesh"
I said meshes are the same, more than one

meager pelican
#

They're not the same at different LOD's though.

toxic flume
#

See carefully please

#

ArmorBox LOD 00

#

I can see two of them at least

meager pelican
#

Well it thinks they're different. IDK why.

#

It says they're different.

#

Did you somehow create different instances of the same mesh with the same name? Like there's two in memory at once?

toxic flume
#

It is a prefab with three LODs inside

#

Above, I see LOD 1 as well but can see several LOD0 too

meager pelican
#

Yeah, I see em on the left, but I also see the message on the right.
So I'm confused.

toxic flume
#

LOD 00
D LOD 00 --> it is door
LOD 00
LOD 00
Weird, one door mesh between three LOD 00 body

#

OK thanks

meager pelican
#

And some calls DID look like they instanced. But I can't tell from that pick, so if you look at the draw instanced ones, they would have instanced, right?

#

You'd have to highlight one of those Box D ones that had draw mesh instanced.

grand jolt
#

@inner idol I tried the shader, it works perfect in Unity.. but when I export the VRM and import it into VWorld or VSeeFace ( for examples ), it is no longer "two sided" Is there a possiblity I am not using the right settings?

inner idol
#

@grand jolt asking my friend that uses VSeeFace, one moment

toxic flume
#

WTH, probably I found it

# 
public void Initialize(string materialId, Color glowColor)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(materialId)) return;
            if (materialId == _itemId && _initializeOnlyOnce) return;

            var mesh = _mainMeshFilter.mesh;
            _cornerPoint = new Vector4(mesh.bounds.min.z, mesh.bounds.min.y, mesh.bounds.max.z, mesh.bounds.max.y);

            _glowColor = glowColor;
            _itemId = materialId;

            var isCreated = MaterialPoolSystem.GetInstance()
                .FindOrCreateMaterial(_itemId, _shader, out _materialPoolResult);
            if (isCreated)
            {
                Debug.Log($"Material Created, Material ID: {materialId}");
                SetMaterialProperties();
            }
                

            _materialPoolResult.PropertyBlock.SetColor(_glowColorId, _glowColor);
            _materialPoolResult.PropertyBlock.SetColor(_rimColorId, _glowColor * _rimColorMultiplier);

            GraphicsUtility.SetChildrenSharedMaterial(_meshRoot, _materialPoolResult.Material,
                _materialPoolResult.PropertyBlock);
        }
#

here _mainMeshFilter.mesh;? instead of shared mesh
but I have used it only to get bounds

grand jolt
#

@inner idol okay, thank you. really appreciate your help 🙂

#

@meager pelican Thank you so much for the advice, I am sorta new to all of this.. so I currently don't know the correct way of setting up a custom shader. Also, may I ask you what you mean by "two draw passes"? and how would you go by generating them 2 sided? By physically modeling it 2 sided?

inner idol
# grand jolt <@!137673069496893441> I tried the shader, it works perfect in Unity.. but when...

ok! my friend said VSeeFace doesn't support everything that poiyomi can do, my bad! ><, however! Deat, one of the contributors of VSeeFace has a discord with a support channel and they will be able to help you there, https://twitter.com/virtual_deat (pinned tweet has invite) Good luck! 😁

Deat @ Tracking World (@Virtual_Deat)

Virtual YouTuber, VR enthusiast and others (FR/EN/Some JP).
Creator of Tracking World and contributor of VSeeFace

Tweets

2010

Followers

2237

Twitter
meager pelican
#

In Unity, you can do multiple passes in one shader (in the standard pipeline). The graphical editor in the new pipeline doesn't support that (yet). There's things we do like a "Grab pass" to grab the screen background, or a depth-only write, or whatever. But you can also render front faces in one pass, and backfaces in another pass. For example. And there's a VFACE semantic that will tell you if you have a front or a back face.

As for double-sided meshes, that's in the modeling software. So for a double-sided quad, I meant that you'd have 4 triangles...two with normals facing "forward" and two with normals facing backwards, but on the same vert locations, totaling 4 polygons. That's actually easy if you don't mind trading triangle count for convenience. But since you're importing (I think) you may not have that option to generate double sided meshes in the first place.

There's more here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/double-sided-material.474594/
In particular see post #7 and further.
All this stuff is a bit of a moving target.

Unity Forum
double sided material

Modeling some palm trees and was wondering if its possible to have a standard shader with a double sided material?

meager pelican
toxic flume
#

I think it was solved, WTH my wrong

#

@meager pelican Really thanks for spending your time

meager pelican
# toxic flume I think it was solved, WTH my wrong

Everyone gets burned by that. I'll bet Unity wishes it wasn't done that way originally. I mean, it's neat if you think about it and happen to know what it is doing. But if you get a brain cramp, and don't think about it, it can catch everyone off guard. And they can't easily fix the issue, because it would break existing stuff, and they can't translate it sharedMesh because that would change functionality and break things.

grand jolt
#

@inner idol That's okay! 😆 Thank you so much for all of your help. I will do that, I couldn't thank you enough.

@meager pelican I am so sorry for asking so many questions.. but if you don't mind, I have a few more..
I am using the standard pipeline, ATM. Where do I set up the passes? and where is "VFACE"?

Okay, I don't mind.. as I am using polygons on this model, so I don't think that would be a problem?
The model was created in Blender, exported and imported into Unity.
Again, I'm very new to all of this. Self learning is hard. 🙃 I really appreciate your advice and patience 🙂

meager pelican
#

There's no need to apologize for asking a question, that's what this discord is for. Just take it all with a grain of salt, we're all group-helping.

Passes and VFACE...
See that link above (Here it is again: https://forum.unity.com/threads/double-sided-material.474594/) post 7 and also here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/standard-shader-modified-to-be-double-sided-is-very-shiny-on-the-underside.393068/#post-2574717

That has a sample shader with multiple passes and VFACE in it.

Unity Forum
Standard Shader (modified to be double sided) is very shiny on the ...

Hello!

I have zero experience in shaders aside from using a forum post to modify the Standard Shader to make it double sided.

However, the "back...

grand jolt
#

@meager pelican Well, I have learnt a lot today because of you guys. 😄
Thank you for all of your time and patience, I'll report back after I see if I can get any of this to work. x3

meager pelican
#

I am exuding optimism as I type! Have fun.

rare charm
wary jackal
#

@rare charm wow this might actually be a question I can help with! If you want your shader to be transparent, you need to type "Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha" underneath your tags section. As far as I know, this tells the compiler how to actually calculate the pixel color of the transparent object. (I'm very new to shaders so my explanation could be wrong)

I tested your code with this line and it worked. Here's the first part:

{
    Properties
    {
        _Alpha ("Alpha", range(0.0, 1.0)) = 1.0
    }

    SubShader
    {
        Tags { "Queue" = "Transparent" }
        Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha

        GrabPass
        {
            "_BackgroundTexture"
        }
full salmon
clever saddle
#

I want this white edge of the texture a little smaller,Which math method should I use?

unknown.png
vocal narwhal
#

multiply will do

#

it really depends on the profile you're looking for

#

Smoothstep, lerp all things that can achieve it in different looking ways

clever saddle
#

Yup,I want the most edge keep bright white as 1 when decreasing the scale of white edge

#

Maybe I need to use smoothstep?I guess.

umbral hemlock
#

Im having a very specific problem. I'm writing a custom rasterizer in a compute shader, and I'm having some issues with z-sorting (writing/reading from a z-buffer). For the most part it works, but since all of my objects are drawing to the screen in a random order (because of the parallelism of GPUs), sometimes some pixels of an object far away will draw over objects that are closer(random every frame). Anyone have any experience with something like this, like making their own GPU rasterizer?

hushed urchin
#

I'm doing some simulation of temperature in a cell wise faction with looking at neighbours with weights etc. And sometimes I get these random value changes (seems like +/- inf) that starts spreading because of it. My guess is that it is some race condition write that mess up the values from my caching to groupshared memory?

unknown.png
#

I think I forgot two corners x)

#

Yep, that was it. Some random uninitialized data^^

meager pelican
meager pelican
#

Basically, you'd "blend manually" based on depth, and write an opaque pixel back out.
I assume, though, that you're dealing with issues of parallelism, like you've isolated appropriate pixels so that you don't get two cores writing to the same pixel at the same time.

#

Or you use atomic read-modify-write (gasp!).

full salmon
meager pelican
#

You basically have a few choices. Off the top of my head:

  1. make an actual mesh dome, but put it just INSIDE of the skybox. That might be hard depending on the type of skybox you're using, but if you're using a dome projection it might not be bad at all. Be aware that the far-plane value varies depending on platform, the depth is encoded differently in different situations, but there's macros for all that. Or just a sufficiently large dome to make it look good. But inside the skybox (radius less that camera far plane).

Anyway, so if you put the mesh inside the skydome, and draw it in the transparent queue, with it being transparent near the ground and opaque above your threshold with some gradient in there, it's automagic....it's just transparency. But the sky would be outside the dome, even if by a small fraction.

  1. The other way is to calculate the dome, and only do the draw once per pixel in the proper color, blending manually for the skybox color. But you'll need to figure out the equations for your dome. 😉
full salmon
#

the dome at the moment isn't a mesh, just a done-shaped UV with a tiled texture on it

#

I have code (nearly) to create the dome with maths, but I really wouldn't want to try and do all that maths in a shader

#

The idea of doing it inside the sky, and fading it out towards the bottom, sounds workable. Would I just move the dome so that its X and Z are always the same as the camera to keep that "not really there" feeling?

meager pelican
#

Yes, you could make it a child of the camera, but it would also rotate with the camera. Another way is to make a special shader for it, so it is always at the location of the player in world-space, but keeps its own rotation and scale. So only the translation part of the transform.

#

Or just update the location = player location, in script. I'd think that will work.

#

Just don't change the rotation or scale.
Then you don't even need a special shader for it. And it would be drawn after the skybox, but still be inside the far-plane. Watch out for floating point inaccuracies, so make sure you use an OK offset inside the skydome.

#

I assume then that your skybox is a gradient of two colors.
And the dome shader is either custom, or it is some transparency gradient or some alpha threshold if you want a sharp cutoff.

#

So what are the colors? Is it blue below a certain point, and black above that, with a dome showing over the black part?

full salmon
#

The skybox shader has all sorts of stuff in it, a sky gradient, then some procedural stars and clouds too. But all that is combined before it gets lerped with the dome. Let me grab a quick vid.

meager pelican
#

OK, that's enough info, but I'd love to see it. Sounds neat.

#

Cool 🙂

full salmon
#

Too small to see the stars since they're pretty much single pixel at full screen. But obviously they're higher up, like this (hang on...)

#

blast from the past!

unknown.png
#

it won't actually be in a world with a mountain and water

meager pelican
#

Yeah, so the sky dome is the sky dome, with stars where appropriate, and transitioning from blue to black.

#

The mesh would be inside of that. Otherwise you'd have the render texture clear-color showing up (which can be a nasty green or hot-pink or something where it wasn't written like it should be). You have to hit every far-plane pixel with the skybox.

full salmon
#

The actual use will be much closer to this:

transform_fun.png
#

So I might have to dial down the realism a bit to make it fit

#

(it's not actually a game, don't tell anyone :D)

digital vector
#

I'm wondering, can i write a render feature to render a specific shader pass to a render texture?

meager pelican
#

By hand you might be able to call it manually.

digital vector
#

No; I have a custom shader with a shader pass that i want to use for calculating outlines and layering those on top of my camera output

#

-i'm using URP

low lichen
#

Sounds like a post processing shader

digital vector
#

yeah but i still need the input from the shader pass

regal stag
digital vector
#

Yooo thanks a bunch! I'll read through it

meager pelican
#

That's the "by hand" method.

digital vector
#

Yes, i was looking for a "by hand" method :p

meager pelican
#

I think you can do an override material in URP too. Rather than listing all objects in a command buffer. There's an interesting technique here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-to-render-everything-with-a-replacement-shader-with-hdrp.678247/
See post #8. But that re-renders the scene and overlays the objects with the new material IIUC. If you want only specific objects, then Cyan's/Alexander's post would list only those in the command buffer.

Unity Forum
How to render everything with a replacement shader... with HDRP?

I have a complicated scene with lots of different objects in it. Each object can consist of a hierarchy of multiple sub-objects. Each sub-object can...

#

2cents

digital vector
#

The thing is that the materials with the pass all have a specific value to them that i need in the result

#

hence why i wanna use a shader pass for that

meager pelican
#

Yeah, it would re-render each object.

This one does too I think (I haven't re-viewed it). And I suppose you could mask off what you don't want with layers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqBtaETaNO4
It's custom outlining in URP.

YouTube
Unity
Introduction to the Lightweight Render Pipeline - Unity at GDC 2019

Learn Lightweight Render Pipeline basics, including where to get it, LWRP main features, and how to set up rendering.

Speaker: Andre McGrail (Technical Artist, Unity Technologies)

Get more info about the Lightweight Render Pipeline: https://on.unity.com/2IvOYAF

▶ Play video
digital vector
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The camera rendering has its own layer

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which are like 8 objects that are being rendered

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which are low poly :v

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so it shouldnt take too big of a toll on performance

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plus, the camera doesnt even render at all times

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its for a menu

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i had a "working" version before, but that was in built in

unknown.png
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but that one required 3 cameras >.<

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And now im working on bringing that over to URP

meager pelican
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Oh. OK.
I'd put the UI on its own overly camera. But I'm dumb about UI so...

digital vector
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yeah i have that stuff in its own entire layer

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with its own camera

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and it gets deactivated when not looking at the menu

meager pelican
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Sounds like you have several options, then.
That looks nice with the outline. 🙂

digital vector
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Ay thanks!

hushed urchin
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Anyone know if Texture2D.SetPixelData would be slower in comparison to using ComputeBuffer.SetData?

tranquil bronze
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Is there a way to interpolate vertex colors for the fragments

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right now its sharp

digital vector
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Are you sure thats not where vertices meet?

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check the wireframe and see if there is an edge

low lichen
digital vector
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if there is, then the model needs to be modified

tranquil bronze
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some of them are on the edge

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some them are in the half way

digital vector
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🤔

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i'd check the model

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and see if there are differences between unity and in your 3d editor

tranquil bronze
# 
struct Attributes
            {
                float4 positionOS : POSITION;
                float4 color : COLOR;
            };

            struct Varyings
            {
                float4 positionCS : SV_POSITION;
                float color : TEXCOORD1;
            };

            Varyings Vertex (Attributes input)
            {
                Varyings output;

                output.color = input.color.x;

                return output;
            }

            float4 Fragment (Varyings input) : SV_Target
            {
                return float4(input.color, 0, 0, 1);
            }
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the mesh is made using a script

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the colors are assigned correctly

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for each vertex

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i just need it to interpolate between the verticies

digital vector
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with that shader, it should work

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it must be the mesh

tranquil bronze
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what would be different with the mesh tho?

digital vector
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hang on lemme demonstrate

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you seem to have it like this right now

unknown.png
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while you want this, right?

unknown.png
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the colors of the vertices that are inbetween need to be interpolated while generating the mesh

tranquil bronze
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that makes sense the mesh is flat shaded

digital vector
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i simply painted the ones in between with a red value of 0.5

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but this was an easy example, as the edge was midway through the mesh

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moving it changes the interpolation

unknown.png
tranquil bronze
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i think i got it now thankyou

digital vector
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np

digital vector
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@regal stag that guide is worth gold, thanks man!

digital vector
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Also, looks like my shadow mask problem only exists in the editor

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but not during playmode

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not gonna complain tho

digital vector
toxic flume
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Static instantiated objects in the scene can not be batched statically, right?
It is better to turn off static batch for them or leave it
Because I have used GPU instancing for them, I see a warning for that GPU instancing breaks because static batching is ticked but in frame debugger, I see they are instanced
If static instantiated objects can not be statically batched, why I see that warning in the inspector material section
"you should untick static batch for instancing stuff"

woeful geyser
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Is it possible to crop a texture before passing it to triplanar node? There are no nodes that alter T2 and return T2 again

meager pelican
# woeful geyser

Instead of thinking about it as cropping the texture, think about changing the UV's instead. Will that work?
It's best to think of that type of texture as a read-only input.

woeful geyser
meager pelican
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I see. Cyan has a write-up here about tri-planar:
https://cyangamedev.wordpress.com/2020/01/28/worldspace-uvs-triplanar-mapping/
Relatively recent too.

Note that the triplanar stuff is in world-space position. The solution, I think, is to scale that for tiling. As far as sampling from an atlas, IDK right now, but maybe you can do some world-space position magic to pull that off, or write your own triplanar routine. I don't think it's that bad, and there's at least 100 examples of the math on the net.

Cyan
Cyan
World space UVs & Triplanar Mapping

This post includes an introduction to using the Position node to sample textures rather than using mesh UV channels, which is also the basis of Triplanar mapping. It won’t be super in-depth but wil…

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What's weird is that it looks like they used to have tiling and offset inputs, and now they don't. They just have "tile".

woeful geyser
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Looks like a good solution. I didn't know it's possible to add custom function node. That's much better than decompiling entire graph. Thanks

meager pelican
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Yeah, then you can just remap the 0...1 result from your triplanar WS locations to your u...v location in your atlas.

woeful geyser
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yep. That's what I'm doing rn 😛 . ty

meager pelican
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lol, np. That's what I'd do too.

wary jackal
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@meager pelican in the code you gave me, what is atten?


        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;```

It's just a float, so I assume it's just changing the intensity of something, but idk
meager pelican
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It was one of the inputs to the function I mentioned. It's the attenuation (so changes intensity by distance).

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I think I gave you a link to the source.

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And/Or showed the input.

wary jackal
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Hm okay. Is it necessary to have that? I don't really know how I would get the attenuation in my shader

meager pelican
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How are you getting the light info?

wary jackal
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directional light, I'll share my code

# 
            {
                // half3 normal = UnpackNormal(tex2D(_NormalMap, i.uv));

                float3 lightDir = _WorldSpaceLightPos0;
                float3 viewDir = normalize(_WorldSpaceCameraPos - i.worldPos);
                float3 lightColor = _LightColor0.rgb;
                float3 albedo = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv).rgb * _Tint.rgb;
                float3 specularTint = _Metallic;
                
                // * This is the Blinn reflection model:
                // float3 reflectionDir = reflect(-lightDir, i.normal); 

                // float4 diffuse = float4(albedo * lightColor * DotClamped(_WorldSpaceLightPos0, i.normal), 1);
                float diffuse = DotClamped(_WorldSpaceLightPos0, i.normal);

                // * This is the Blinn-Phong reflection model:
                float3 halfVector = normalize(lightDir + viewDir);
                float normalHalfVector = DotClamped(halfVector, i.normal);
                // * Now we just get the power to get the smoothness
                normalHalfVector = pow(normalHalfVector, _Smoothness * 500);

                float3 specular = lightColor * specularTint;

                float4 color;

                diffuse = diffuse * albedo * lightColor;
                color.rgb = normalHalfVector * specular + diffuse;
                return color;

            }```
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could I do a max function? Like, max(1, _WorldSpaceCameraPos - i.worldPos?) and then multiply that or something?

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well that got weird results, so probably not what I'm looking for

meager pelican
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Directional lights have attenuation of 1, they don't attenuate. But IDK if there's shadow stuff in the mix or not. But for this, disregarding self-shadowing, or maybe use directional light intensity. I'm unsure right now and can't go look it up, ATM.

wary jackal
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okay

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thx

grand jolt
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Hi how do I important a model from Blender to Unity with the shaders I built in blender?

meager pelican
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You don't. You re-write the shaders in Unity. They don't translate from Blender.

grand jolt
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Oh...

meager pelican
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The model imports though.

grand jolt
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Shadergraph is real I see

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I mean I'm forced to used shader graph right?

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(I don't actually wanna learn shader coding bruh lol)

meager pelican
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No, you can code them the old fashioned way, with a text editor.
Or buy a different node-based editor, like Amplify.
But Shader Graph is the unity one for scriptable pipelines.
If you want standard pipeline, research "Surface shaders in Unity".

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Or use amplify. But double check what I said before purchasing, I don't use Amplify or any of the other editors, so grain of salt.

grand jolt
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Thank you @meager pelican

tired canyon
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can I not accept an integer as input to a custom function?

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in shader graph

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I don't see it on the list of possible inputs

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oh...

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I use a float in Integer mode?

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does that sound right to people?

tired canyon
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And I don't seem to be able to set the integer option on a float... Interesting

wary jackal
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I don't get the inout argument in a function for hlsl. Any explanations?

meager pelican
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Wait....is that list from the CPU side? Or where? Use float, sure.

@wary jackal As for your question, on the HLSL params that have inout, it's passed in, and when you change it in the function, it's passed back out and updates the values so the caller will get changed values.

wary jackal
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So, it's basically as if the function had a return type of whatever you want it to be really without having to have a return type?... in my case it would be v2f

drowsy trail
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is there anyway to get the output color of an unlit shader graph through script?

light epoch
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im totally new to shaders, i have this shader that was built in the standard render pipeline and its just pink in urp

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how do i convert the shader to urp

tired canyon
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That's the list of possible input options

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That unity is giving me for a custom function node

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I need an integer cause I have to use it to index into a compute buffer, and I already have the integer

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So if I connect it up to a float type input port

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It'll be okay?

mental bone
toxic flume
nimble night
white cypress
nimble night
tired canyon
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is there a function to transform a point using a 4x4 matrix

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I can't figure out what the shader graph node is called

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only finding Transform which goes between the various coordinate spaces

regal stag
tired canyon
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Yea I was just getting thrown off by the casting to float4

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I figured it out

meager pelican
tired canyon
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I am trying to just draw some cubes in hdrp

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via the instanced api

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draw mesh indirect

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and I am having one heck of a time trying to get them to appear

meager pelican
# tired canyon via the instanced api

You mean using GPU instancing as set up by the engine? So you have several game objects in the scene all using that cube mesh and you're writing a shader?

Or are you doing some procedural geometry, or some manual instancing?

tired canyon
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I was generating meshes and drawing them, but I wanted to test how that compared to drawing instanced subsets

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but to start I'm literally just setting up a compute buffer with 5 matrices

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and trying to draw 5 cubes using those matrices

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via the mesh indirect call

meager pelican
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Look also at DrawProcedural and family.

tired canyon
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I wrote a custom function node which looks up the matrix in the compute buffer and spits it out

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but I am not sure if my shader is remotely correct

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My thought process was get the object position, transform it using this localToWorld Matrix

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and then transform it back to object space

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and set the vertex position

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but I'm looking at some examples and they seem to just be manually modifying the unity_ObjectToWorld matrices

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which I thought wasn't quite something you could do directly in hdrp

meager pelican
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I think it would help you to look into UnityObjectToClipPos(), as that's the one you normally do in a vert() function with an object-space mesh, and a transform on the game object. You'll need the camera's view matrix passed in or whatever the hell it is. There's a similar one for object normals too so you can do lighting.

So if you have (even an internal) unit-cube mesh, and you have passed in each mesh's 4x4 matrix, that function will give you what you need to output from the vert() shader.
This will help too: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-BuiltinFunctions.html
It's the model-view-projection matrices, and with some research you can figure out what gets set and what doesn't by the engine. It's in the include files, and you can download shader sources too if you haven't already.

tired canyon
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where can I grab sources?

meager pelican
tired canyon
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ah I had just found that

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thanks

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I am a bit surprised at how much harder this is compared to built in pipeline stuff

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I thought this would be a relatively straight forward exercise haha

meager pelican
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I'd say "different" or "more feature rich" but yeah. 😉

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Interestingly, I woke up (wow, waking up thinking about GPU crap, sad) and started thinking about an article from AMD I read recently regarding generating camera facing quads in the vertex shader and NOT doing a geometry shader. And then I started wondering how VFX graph does it.

So BTW, you can do what you're doing (mesh locations) really easy in VFX graph, with mesh particles. IIRC. But it's not as fun as learning it yourself, and you're doing a learning exercise.

tired canyon
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this is not a learning exercise as much as me wanting to see which approach I want to take 🤣

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I'd much rather take a faster easier route

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I haven't played with vfx graphs at all yet

meager pelican
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I suppose experimentation (selecting approach) is a form of testing which is a form of learning a result, proving a theory. So...meh

tired canyon
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ah absolutely

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I just meant I'm cool with learning less if it means reusing other peoples stuff that works

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at least for some pieces

meager pelican
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Did you research things like "mesh particles" or "procedural mesh generation in HDRP"?

tired canyon
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I haven't looked at anything particle related

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I have looked at a bunch of mesh generation stuff

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I have a jobs based system right now where I'm chunking things up

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but it eats a fair bit of CPU

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so I wanted to see what offloading some of that to the GPU might look like

meager pelican
# tired canyon so I wanted to see what offloading some of that to the GPU might look like

Here's an interesting thing about instancing and vertex shaders. See slides starting at about 15 and particularly 17. He's generating quads from a data buffer location read. In a vertex shader.
IDK what DX level you need for that but I'm guessing 11.0 or 11.1. https://www.slideshare.net/DevCentralAMD/vertex-shader-tricks-bill-bilodeau
Although that's for quads, it isn't far removed from, say, a cube.

SlideShare
AMD Developer Central
Vertex Shader Tricks by Bill Bilodeau - AMD at GDC14
tired canyon
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I'm not looking to target anything other than desktops

toxic flume
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Frame Debugger
objA (instanced) --> this batch contains two same objects (ObjA)
objA (instanced) --> this batch contains three same objects (ObjA)
objA (instanced) --> this batch contains two same objects (ObjA)
It says materials are different while they have same material, WTH
I checked several times, that material is the same. When I change for example color property, it is reflected for all of them
They are batched based on distance, I think.

Another scenario

objA (instanced) --> this batch contains two same objects (ObjA)
objB
objA (instanced) --> this batch contains three same objects (ObjA)

objB between two same objectA, again break batching

meager pelican
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Show a frame debugger screenshot of one you think is wrong.
There's several reasons, including you accidentally making a copy of a material.

slim steppe
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Hi i've never really coded shaders could someone please try to help me? My goal is to make a unlit object be visible through other objects but with a lower alpha value. I did some research and think it has to do with the z buffer but just "turning it off" makes it completely visible.

toxic flume
meager pelican
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Static batching might be making different mesh instances (it builds meshes), you posted about it! Did you turn that off, did it help at all?

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In your screen shots, it's talking about DIFFERENT MESHES, not different materials. So changing material properties won't tell you anything in that case.

toxic flume
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Done, almost solved

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I changed queue to Geometry+1, WTH

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It is not about static batching
Yes I unchecked static batch for all of them

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About different meshes, it says related to the previous one not same objects
It is obvious that the weapon box mesh is different from the previous one p1911 or health box
It is all about render order. If I have different queue for thoese instanced meshes, the problem is solved or remove intermediate objects (yellow rect)

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I said almost, because I should define different queue for each item type and instanced mesh
For example a weapon box has two meshes (up and down). I have to define as an instance Geometry+1 for up meshes and Geometry+2 for down meshes, messy
Therefore, all up meshes are rendered and then down meshes and finally can be batched correctly

meager pelican
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Remind me, SRP or standard pipeline?

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SRP batches differently than standard.

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But it should sort that instancing stuff out.

wary jackal
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How might I go about making a fragment shader that changes the color of a mesh based on the steepness of the vertices? I've seen Sebastian Lague do it a few times in his videos (erosion video most specifically) but I do not know how to approach this... Any ideas?

meager pelican
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OK, the "steepness" would be a triangle's surface normal, relative to a horizontal or vertical normal.
Try subtracting the normal's y component from 1.0. That's one way. If it is pointing straight up, the result will be 0, and if it is pointing horizontally, the result would be 1 (cliff). It could be pointing downward in some cases, so you'd have to check for that if such is true.

Spitballing here.

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Whatever result you get, you're aiming for a value between 0 and 1 so you can use it in a gradient lookup or some lerp or however you decide to color it.

wary jackal
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Yeah using a lerp would probably be simple

light epoch
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hey guys sry if im interrupting anything but i need help making a standard pipeline shader work in urp

wary jackal
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Should I do lighting as a separate pass?

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@light epoch You can't really interrupt in this server, questions are essential (even if I have no idea how to answer them)

light epoch
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true

meager pelican
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You can also try a dot product between your surface normal and some vector. Here's a good explanation:

meager pelican
wary jackal
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So then, no not unless there's multiple lights

meager pelican
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But if there are....sure.
But unity's default stuff calcs some basic per-pixel lighting as it colors too. Then adds later in things like "forward add", for example.

tired canyon
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anyone have any tips for why apparently UNITY_INSTANCING_ENABLED is never defined for a shader I'm drawing with the InstanceIndirect API?

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I've got instancing enabled on the material too

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I'm inside of shader graph if that matters, as a custom function node

wary jackal
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I guess it all depends on what you're trying to accomplish

meager pelican
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Is it a vert/frag? If so, did you use #pragma multi_compile_instancing?

tired canyon
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I had a pragma multi_compile

meager pelican
tired canyon
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but not with compile_instancing

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hopefully this is it