[Best Tool Asset Store Award] Amplify Shader Editor - Node-based Shader Creation Tool

Thank you!​

You helped us make the best out of ASE, we would not be here without your support. We're very happy and humbled to be part of the Unity community, this award is for all of you.

* Built-in renderer, HD, Lightweight, and URP Support! *

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Amplify Shader Editor now supports the creation of Lightweight and High Definition SRP compatible shaders. From a creation standpoint, it's as simple as selecting a shader type such as Standard, Custom Lighting, or any other type currently available.

Be it for beginners or advanced users, ASE is the go-to solution for flexible shader development. With over 40 varied free shader samples, Shader Functions, a Custom Node API, an innovative Template System, extensive wiki references, community contributions, and an ongoing tutorial series.

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Amplify Shader Editor is a node-based shader creation tool inspired by industry leading editors. An open and tightly integrated solution, it provides a familiar and consistent development environment that seamlessly blends with Unity’s UI conventions and Shader use. AAA quality and flexibility at an indie affordable cost with the responsive customer support and short iteration times that you can always expect from Amplify Creations.

Among many distinguishing workflow enhancing features, the editor offers Shader Templates for custom shader types, Shader Functions for reusable node networks, a Custom Node API, and Full Source Code.

Asset Store Page - Manual - Wiki - Discord

Download Latest Version​

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NEW! Canvas Screenshot button
NEW! Shader Templates
NEW! Shader Functions
NEW! Easy graph share through Share button
NEW! SRP packages auto-importer
NEW! Compatibility with Unity 2019
NEW! Support for Post-Processing Stack shaders
NEW! Compatible with Substance in Unity plugin
NEW! Support for Custom Render Textures
NEW! Support for HD, URP, and Lightweight SRP
NEW! Multi-Pass on Templates
NEW! Xbox One/PS4/Switch Support
NEW! Terrain support
NEW! Shader Templates

New Tool

• Post-Processing Stack Tool

New Samples

• Scale Independent Tile
• Volumetric Pixelize by Raphael Ernaelsten
• SRP HD Omni Decal
• Mosaic Effect
• Unlit With Lightmap

Latest Improvements

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  • Added templates specifically for the new Universal Rendering Pipeline
  • Added new HD Lit template compatible with Unity's HDRP shader inspector
  • Infinite loop detection is now faster, reducing hit when connecting nodes on large graphs.
  • Improved nodes preview rendering refresh behavior
  • New tag system created to improve node search
  • Take a screenshot of your whole canvas by simply hitting the Screenshot button
  • Easily share selected portions of the graph through the Share button
  • Added new post-processing stack tool which generates a cs script with a PPS Renderer and Settings from a given shader.
  • Amplify Shader Editor supports both HD and Lightweight SRP v6.x.x via templates.
  • Legacy HD and Lightweight SRP v3.x.x/v4.x.x/v5.x.x templates are also supplied via Legacy packages.
  • Support for Custom Render Texture usage on Unity 2017 and above via Custom RT templates.
  • Substances can now also be used on ASE canvas with Unity 2018 and above through the Substance in Unity plugin.
  • Can now access 8 UV channels when on Unity 2018.2 and above.
  • Can Pan and Zoom ASE canvas camera through keyboard directional keys.
  • Support for Material Types into HD PBR SRP template.
  • Support for Specular workflow into Lightweight PBR SRP template.
  • Custom Options can now be added directly over templates.

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Notable Features

• Full source-code
• Custom Node API
• Shader Templates
• Shader Functions
• Multi-window Support
• Intuitive, familiar node interface
• Extensive node library
• Instancing Support
• User Contributed Nodes and Shaders
• Growing sample collection

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ASE will continue to be improved throughout 2020, we have a lot planned for this year! You can currently create and extend Surface Shaders, create your own shader types via Shader Templates, use Custom Lighting, or even create your own Custom Nodes using the ASE Node API.

SHADER TEMPLATES

You can finally break free from standard surface shaders. No longer will you be limited to default shader types, it’s the ideal solution for custom shader pipeline requirements that take advantage of node-based shader authoring. Templates are just as regular Unity shaders but with special ASE tags placed at key points. Be sure to check the official wiki page for additional information. The current ASE package includes Particles, UI, Sprites and Image Effects templates.

SHADER FUNCTIONS

SF for short, are reusable node networks condensed into a single node with custom output and input ports. Easy to setup and extremely flexible, they work by receiving input values directly from your shader, processing that information and outputting them back for further alterations or direct use. SF assets are not bound to any shader, you can use them multiple times throughout your project, in the same shader, inside other Shader Functions, or even share them with other users.

Intuitive

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Focused on UX, the workspace is intuitive and familiar, clean, and flexible. Dock it, or use it in a second monitor, it’s prepared to fit your layout requirements.

Minimalist

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The toolbars and menus have been optimized in order to maximize the workspace area. Creating nodes or new Shaders is as intuitive as creating a new Unity Material in the Project Explorer window.

Responsive

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Smooth interaction with fast response times, you are in control. Double-click an ASE Shader and it will instantly open it in the editor, double-click a Material using an ASE Shader and will automatically load both.

Real-Time

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One-click shader and material updates, a LIVE mode is also available. Material adjustments are immediately visible directly in the viewport or inspector preview area.

Open

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Fully customizable, it includes full source code and it’s open to user submissions. Nodes, improvements, fixes, or even plugins, your contribution and feedback is very valuable to us.

Nodes

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ASE has a varied and growing node library. In addition to common nodes, it also includes several dedicated composite nodes. It’s a great way to easily achieve complex operations using less nodes. The node collection will continue to grow, more complex and advanced will be added in upcoming updates. A full Node list is available in the Amplify Creations Wiki.

Samples

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The ASE package includes several examples to get you started. You are free to modify and use any of the available shaders in your own projects, we will add more samples in future updates. We are open to user submissions, contribute today and your work could be featured in our site, Asset Store page or even the official package!

We want your feedback!
Help us shape your editor.​

Visit our website for additional information on all our products. Be sure to contact us if you run into any problems or if you have any questions regarding our products, we would be happy to help. You are all premium users to us, stay in touch, we would love to hear more about your work.

Join us on Discord: Official Channel

 

180+ Samples for HDRP, URP, and BiRP
FREE for all Amplify Shader Editor users!
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We're separating ASE samples from the main package. It's always been a struggle to keep multiple versions or to include higher resolution content. This way we can now offer more samples, models, higher resolution textures on future samples and better demo scenes. It's completely FREE to all ASE owners, just checkout at no cost. (be sure to be on the account that owns ASE) You can also pick it up on our site once you redeem it via the Asset Store: http://amplify.pt/download


You may already know most of these shaders but now you have Built-in, URP and HDRP versions.

Learn more: Asset Store

 

Hi,
Sorry for bringing in a competitor right away but for peolple who already own shaderforge, can you explain which new features/advantages the amplify shader editor brings to the table?

 

Could I create multiple passes per shader with it?

 

I added to my wish list this morning and then succumbed to peer pressure from my Skype group and jumped on the bandwagon of a few of us who went ahead and picked it up. Definitely looks like an awesome tool.. With the Amplify team behind it, I have confidence that you guys are going to do great things with it. Can't wait to see what is yet to come!

 

For ASE we are aiming to provide a more intuitive workflow to create shaders that seamlessly blends with Unity native UI. More importantly we aim to develop a community driven plugin

This beta will grow according to the customer needs. During its process we will shape the plugin according to all the feedback.

Also we provide full source-code all the way. Everyone will see what is being done, play with it and modify it.

On this Beta 1 we can only create a single pass per shader

 

My apologies, I should have been asking about the future instead of asking about the current beta.

1. Is the framework capable of having multiple passes implemented? I believe that my all-time favorite shader tool has this limitation.
2. Is there some way to create/append the pipeline stages (vertex, hull, domain, etc) or at least the VS and PS?

 

Just to add to what Rick said - there are many core differences in our editor. I like to describe it as an alternative, instead of a competitor. We want to make something different, open, and affordable. In a sense, it provides similar technical features but with our own implementation, improvements and additions. In BETA 1, we want to offer a solid, intuitive, and seamless integrated experience. Future updates will focus more on technical improvements or additions, we have a lot in development.

ASE was a bit born out of necessity, we needed a tool that could fill our own requirements for our game, Decay of Logos. Reliable, fully open and with fast iteration times. Our developers are extremely experienced with advanced shader development, it feels like the next logical step to take.

Stay tuned, this is just the beginning!

 

Thanks, you wont be disappointed!

 

Hi,

1. We can definitely extend the framework to be able to support multiple passes. We have a multiple canvas via tabs feature on our roadmap which will help this feature to be implemented.

2. For now you can only have access to the standard surface shader ( and do fragment operations ) and only do extrusion operations on the vertex shaders.

Thanks!

 

Just bought it ! I think it has a really good place in the AssetStore, and I like your philosophy about the open source and stuff. Can't wait to see new things integrated by you or the community.

Do you plane to create a feeback website ? maybe http://feathub.com/ ?

My feedback quickly (more to come in the future I guess):
- Will you add the possibility to create group ?
- Can you add a fresnel node ?

Thanks

 

I'm a huge fan of Shader Forge, so naturally this peaks my curiosity. For a first beta version it already looks very extensive and I'm sure we can expect more to come! Small things like being able to add a frame around nodes inspired a lot of confidence in its usability

I do have one burning question: are Substance generated outputs supported as bitmap inputs?

 

Amplify developers are most present on the forum to support their products.
My 2 cents.



On my buying list. Of course

 

Purchased!

 

Are you planning on integrating distance-based dynamic phong tessellation and subsurface scatter in the future? Thanks.

 

This is a really great idea.

Yes, we plan to add groups. You will be able to group simple native nodes into big compound ones.
Concerning the Fresnel node, we have a list of requested nodes and will register this node on it and will definitely add it in a future update.

Substance is on the table but only on later iterations.

It's not planned but it might be something interesting to explore.

 

This looks interesting. Is there some sort of Roadmap you can share? What kind of shaders are we able to make with the current version and what can we create down the road?

 

Olá pessoal

So, I played with it for an hour or so and I have a few notes to make.

I decided to start with some easy stuff and tried to re-create a shader I created a few weeks ago that simply does some refractive effect with chomatic aberration. Unfortunately I couldn't even create a refraction effect since you don't have any node that gives us the screen color, or in other words, that adds the screen grab pass to the shader. You do have the screen position stuff for the uvs but without any way to get the screen current frame it's impossible to do anything refractive.

I then proceeded to something else and tried a simple rim effect. In the process I noticed some things not doing what I expected, it was hard to tell if it was error in my part or not because shaders are hard to debug but I just wasn't able to invert a simple fresnel effect in the [0-1] range. At first I thought you did't have any invert node so I simply did a subtraction (1-myValue) and since my clamp wasn't working either for some reason I finally gave up and opened your example with the rim light and I noticed you do have the invert node (One Minus). Maybe it's force of habit but i wasn't getting there just by searching the name. Either way, when I finally put the node in, it worked, including the clamp, but the funny part is that the subtraction node still didn't ? I opened the generated code and the float constant value that I set to one was being generated as a zero, so it was doing (0-myValue), seems like a bug.

A few bugs I found were all about the window, so I didn't dock it. One of them happens when you click in the title of the shader and you drag down, it mouse starts doing the box selection but the content starts moving down as well. Another one happens when you select a node and the you select the unity window and bring it outside windows screen position, if you do that the selected node starts moving when it's outside of view, it does this indefinitely, I even managed to have a node somewhere into the infinity and it's a pain to bring it back.

other stuff:
Whats the "dirty" property that the editor generates?

I did get disappointed that I couldn't generate custom shaders, it only generates surface shaders and thats a deal breaker to many people and putting everything into emission does breaks some stuff if you are using screen shaders so I would put that somewhere at the top of your priority list.

I do like the editor so far but while I understand the parity you are trying to achieve with the unreal shader editor I do prefer the visual icons that shader forge gives us (I hope you don't mind the comparisons)

The shader settings are still barebones and I believe it will get better with time but one thing I miss is the material preview.

All in all, it's a really good start but I'm not sure if it's production ready yet. But I still think you did well to release it early in beta to get feedback. I'll keep trying new things and specially porting some stuff from unreal to battle test it

edit: forgot to say that I like the tooltips, they helped me a couple of times since there's a initial learning curve to your editor, keep them up

 

Awesome Thanks.

I used it a little more.

It would be very handy to have debug value above the nodes. For instance, for mathematics expression or for time.

Can't wait to see what happens next

 

Wondered if the shader output is readible for further manual editing and optimisation, and what kind of performance do these shaders have? optimisations and so on?

 

For what I saw, it's pretty clean !

 

Request: outline.

 

Great start!

Wishlist:
- Custom Shaders (vert, frag)
- Custom code node
- Custom Lighting
- Mobile Optimization
- Multiple Passes
- Support for particle and UI shaders

 

Yes, we have a public simple roadmap on the plugin site which we will expand taking all feedback into account and also with more new info from our private, more detailed roadmap.
You can only create Surface Shaders for now. Our main focus with this first beta was more on the user experience and overall workflow but on the future we will support standard vertex/fragment shaders and other new cool features.

We can definitely add this functionality!

We will replicate this issue on our end and fix it asap.

Rest assured that we will fix all these nasty issues.

We use it to internally catch when you hit reset on the material and set the its properties to the shaders default values.

Surface shaders are only the beginning. Custom shaders have a really high priority on our roadmap.
Can you elaborate on the " putting everything into emission"? We only force everything on the emission channel when the Debug port is connected, if not the instructions will be fed into the according connected ports (albedo/normal/etc).

Yes we completely agree with you. We will definitely register your suggestion.

We aiming to generate clean shader code in order for users can to clearly see what is being done. Also this way is easier to catch possible bugs on the shader code generation.
You can manually edit the shader on a text editor but these changes won't be read by our plugin. We only parse our custom data which is always written on the end of the shader file.
We also create a checksum on the file in order to see if manual changes are done and warn the users when opening the shader on ASE that those changes will be lost.
Optimizations wize, on the shader code generation we check multiple usages of the same output, save its value into temporary variables and use these temporaries. With this we also aim to prevent multiple fetches on the same texture node.
It's far from finished but this is an area on which we will continously work on, in order to always improve the generated shader to its best.

Can you elaborate a bit more on that?


Thank you so much for all this initial feedback! We are already full force on improving this first beta according to it!

 

All great suggestions!

 

Another quick bug. The append node for vector2 is generating a vector 3 instead.

 

Nicely caught, we already replicated and fixed it!

 

also purchased its really promising, some interesting request: mobile optimisation/warning (this function is too expensive for mobile !) for example

 

Ah yes, it makes perfect sense!

Also, kebrus was kind to share his shader with us so we could replicate his issue. There was an internal casting issue which fortunately was easy to spot and fix.

 

I bought it a few minutes ago and will give it a try because your other plugins are under the best in the asset store.

How many devs are working on this plugin? Do you have any estimates for your update cycle timing?

 

Ok, two more.

So I managed to create my own node to get the screen color (still very buggy but it seems to work). But I found two other problems in the process.

The first is that, because we don't have custom shaders yet putting a refractive shader in emission ruins it but, meanwhile I'm outputting to albedo as a test and the result was not what I expected, with some tinkering I found it was the render queue, I want to render it after everything else. The problem is, you have the render queue tied to the render type, and in my case I want the render queue as "Transparent" and the render type as "Opaque", but if I select Opaque it always changes the queue to geometry, not only that but something is funny, I might be wrong here but shouldn't it be something like "Geometry+0" instead of "Geometry0"? it might be a typo. But anyway, If I then change the render type to Transparent I get the correct render queue but now the effect gets lost because the blending kicks in because it's now a transparent shader.

The other thing that I'm not sure about are the matrices, I temporarily got around the first problem by opening the file and manually fixing it, so I was trying to make my refraction shader distort with the object geometry and I needed one of the matrices to do a dot product but the output is always 0 (zero), looking at the files they seem fine, I tried a bunch of them and they all output to zero instead of "UNITY_MATRIX_MVP" (for example).

If i get these two fixed I should be able share some somewhat nice refraction shaders.

 

We currently have one developer working full-time on the beta. Our initial estimates are to try and release major beta updates on a monthly basis at the Unity Asset Store. We are also working on building a private forum where we will try to release new builds multiple times per week. We really want the community to always have the latest version and maintain a good feedback loop.

Yes, the '+' was missing. This was indeed a typo.
Concerning the render type and queue, we decided to have presets ( Blend Mode dropdown ) to keep it simple for this first beta, but yes we will have separate configurations for each one.

I'm not quite sure if I understand what might be the issue because dot product is a vector operation so it shouldn't be used on matrices. Are you trying to access a specific row/column of a matrix, use that on the dot product and getting incorrect results?

We're really looking forward on seeing your shader fully working!

 

Hi all! Its look great!
I have question about current or planned functionality.
1) ASE provide any method for several subshader (with different target platform, for example) with keyword depended nodes?
2) ASE provide custom lights or custom cginc?
3) ASE can access compute buffers in high end systems?

 

Thank you so much for your interest!

On Beta 1 you can only create single pass, single subshader surface shaders.

A more detailed roadmap will be provided over the official site as soon as possible, so you know what are our near, mid and long term plans.

We also really want to reinforce that it will not be set on stone. This plugin will be community driven and will be changed over time according to feedback and requests.

 

Nice! Picked up a license -- excited to see where it goes.

 

Hm. Ok, I wait for official roadmap, because node based editor for shader its intresting... but in more general way than one pass and one subshader. In my project I use write in compute buffers (in DX11 subshader) with per light computation instead directly output from shader to screen... if ASE can handle this in future (subshaders and custom nodes) its will be great.
P.S. Sorry for my bad english... its my readonly language.

 

Incredible! You just ripped through the asset rankings with this release in DAYS. How long is this initial price offering lasting? I own your other products - which I really like, and I'm thinking of buying this too.

Side note: I'm glad you have trial versions of your other plugins. I tried out bloom and motion that way, then purchased them after putting them in several scenes to see what was possible. Because of that, I also purchased occlusion when it went on sale some time ago because I already had an idea of what to expect.

 

Hi, Shader Forge have lots of users now, what's the competitive advantage of this product?

Personally, I think mathematic lighting models are black magic for artists, would ASE make them eaiser?

 

Request: UV-Mixing

 

Will there be a way of easily integrating these shaders with Amplify Texture?

 

For me, there is no advantage over Shader Forge, at least with Amplify Shader in its beta state, but sometimes it is good to have a backup, in case the other plugin goes unsupported / deprecated.

 

I think it's too early to have one to be honest, the best case scenario is to have the community help shaping the product. I believe that's the primary reason for them to release this early. If you think lighting models are hard to to work with, what would prefer using? Preset styles? I think if you voice your needs they will listen.

If they continue to be open source and at least match what shader forge can do then they have the advantage of letting you customize the editor to your needs. I've managed to create two nodes that I wanted in few days, granted, shader forge already has them and they do have a custom code node too, but being able to create your own and optimize the code as you see fit is a pretty big feature to me. I've always used shader forge to prototype shaders and not to create the final one since they are pretty heavy. For the common artist it would be great to let them create small and optimized shaders, even if they are for mobile... well, I'm dreaming for now. But at least thats the potential I see with ASE

 

Ya, that's true, I still remember that dark time when I started. IMO, editable basic preset helps a lot. At least frequently used tricks like vertex animation, uv pan, dissolve etc, these stuff can be very useful because user can combine them with the standard PBR shader and then create nice effects in a short time.

What's more, I noticed SF doesn't fully support lightmap baking for Custom Lighting based shaders. That's horrible if you don't want to use PBR based. Its author said this issue comes from Enlighten pipeline, I hope ASE can fix this problem.

 

On this Beta it's extremely important for the community to always have the latest ASE version so we can maintain a great feedback loop, fast iterate on new features and quickly solve bugs.

Because of that we added a new Download Beta area on the ASE webpage. Simply write your ASE invoice number on the text area and hit 'Unlock'.
You will then have access to all the latest versions with their matching release notes.

As mentioned before we will try to release new versions multiple times per week.

For future reference we also added this link into this thread initial post.

Our plans are to maintain this initial price for at least a month, which will be the duration of this first beta. When releasing Beta 2 we will also increase its price.

This looks really interesting! Your request has been registered!

Yes, one of our goals is to easily use our other Amplify Products under the ASE environment. But this will only happen on a later stage.

Looking forward on your feedback!

 

Hello,

will arrays be supported? I have currently shaderforge but it does not have the feature.
Why I need arrays?

Imagine I need multiple overlays which are procedural generated. Example energy shield with multiple bullet hit impact effects. The overlay need multiple local position to work. This seems best to do with arrays. It saves much code and time.

 

Here is something i created with amplify shader! its a water flow shader and it only took me like 25 min ! loving it!

 

Very cool! Is there a forum or place I (a person with very little experience in developing shaders) can go to ask specific questions about using this shader editor (EG a forum or something)? In particular I'm trying to figure out how to use a different normal map for the specular highlight than the diffuse shading- or even better, if I can add an extra specular highlight that uses its own normals separate from the regular diffuse and specular shading- (would it be best for me to build a new specular shader and plug it into the emission?), but it seems to me that questions like that would fill up this thread pretty quickly!

 

This is a really neat suggestion! We'll try to figure out a cool way on manipulating arrays inside ASE.

 

Hello,

For now, we recommend posting all your questions here. That's a very specific effect, I'm afraid that it can't be done with the currently available ASE version. It should be possible as soon as we finish adding support for Custom Lighting models. Would this be for something similar to a Skin shader? We would be happy to provide additional information, if possible.

Thanks!

 

Hi, I downloaded the new beta, but when unpacking the zip file I just get lots of folders with unique ids. Shouldn't this be a unitypackage?