Adding text on shaders in Shader Graph

[normal topaz]

I'm a C# developer, but new to unity, I tried using the shader graph and found it is pretty similar to shader nodes in blender.

So I created a simple shader for a pool ball, that as I understand I can control programmatically, but I was wondering if there is a way to add text to the ball

[pastel elm]

Best achieved with texture that has the text in it

[normal topaz]

But I guess at that point it would be easier to just store a texture of all of the balls with the labels

[pastel elm]

I don't disagree. I don't see much value in using special shader for the the balls at all

[normal topaz]

I'm just playing around with the Shader Graph, to be honest

Seemed like an interesting thing to try

[pastel elm]

Nothing wrong with that. Just for a learning opportunity, you could make a texture that has all the numbers/text required for all the balls in one black and white atlas

[normal topaz]

I think I could just make one texture with all the balls in it

Like one side of each ball

[pastel elm]

that could work too

[normal topaz]

Welp, thanks for the help

[obsidian thicket]

I'm sure there's more than a few ways to make text purely from shaders, but you probably have to get clever
And it'd be totally hellish to do with nodes

[normal topaz]

A lot of maths would probably have to be involved

[obsidian thicket]

A lot

[normal topaz]

I was thinking of somehow involving the vectors of a font in a shader

But that's just... Why would I do that lol

I'm just gonna make a B&W texture with the numbers from 1 to 13 and overlay them on top of the existing graph

[pastel elm]

That's more trouble than it is worth. Pure textures and SDF textures are the two ways I would consider

[normal topaz]

Pure textures?

[pastel elm]

bad wording, like just image of the font

[normal topaz]

Oh, fair enough

[obsidian thicket]

Preferably whole word I'd say, unless you really want to have arbitrary letter combinations

[normal topaz]

Yeah, well It's just gonna be the numbers, so I think I'm just gonna write 1, 2, 3 ... 10, 11, 12, 13

For simplicity

Don't wanna deal with alighning the numbers

[obsidian thicket]

Sidenote, on shadertoy searching "letters" turns up some totally procedural text
I wouldn't dream of doing that with nodes
But SG supports custom nodes too

[pastel elm]

I mean it's not too difficult, just matter of combining basic shapes into a SDF function. Just a lot of work to get all the numbers