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

Thanks for the response!

That works well, I got to create the stripes. But I haven't figured out how to make a transparent stripe. I have tried different materials but no luck.

I appreciate some help with getting the transparency to work. I'm targeting mobile.

If I get the transparent stripes working, I will try to edit the colours in play time following https://www.ronja-tutorials.com/post/048-material-property-block

Thanks again.

 

Hey there,

Transparent in what sense? While mixing or actual material transparency visible in the scene?

 

I mean part of the material being 100% transparent in the scene. The material is either 100% opaque at parts (stripes of solid colour, no texture), or 100% transparent.

I got to create a material that has 1 stripe occupying 1/10 of the material width, that I can reposition to each of the 10 positions, and the rest is transparent. I'm thinking of going the brute force way and create 10 materials with 1 stripe in each 10 positions, for each colour, one for each stripe. And then combine them in play time.
This way I can combine them into one image of 10 stripes of different colours.
I'm in the middle of testing this, I'm concerned that having 10 materials (with transparency) in 1 object will be too much for mobile. I need to test because I have no idea if it will work, or if it will have too much impact in performance.

Thanks for the answers and sorry for the beginner's questions.

 

You'll need to set the shader to Transparent and give it a specific value Opacity/Alpha, 1 being fully opaque and 0 completely transparent. Which shader type are you using?

 

I am using the Universal/Unlit.

I got the transparency working (tested on editor, will test on mobile next).

As of now I have a material with 1 stripe, and the rest of the material is transparent.
I can reposition this stripe to the other 10 positions easily, by offsetting it.
So I will create 10 materials for each colour, each for a stripe position.
Then, during play, I will fill each of the 10 positions of the object with a stripe material of its corresponding colour.
(for example: 1st position pink, 2nd position blue, 3rd position yellow, ...)
My concern is that it will impact performance on mobile (if it works) to have 10 transparent materials on 1 object, but from a quick test it looks like it could work. It's solid colour material, doesn't need to interact with lights.


(I'm trying to add screenshots of what I have so far here but it's breaking, so I'm pasting the links.)
https://imgur.com/a/15p5YDP
https://imgur.com/a/HdsTKlv


That's what I'm testing now. I hope it works. I was going for a dynamic material, but if this works then I'm fine with this. I have very little knowledge of shaders.

 

Glad you figured out Transparency; 10 materials does sound like a bit much but ok for testing. Perhaps it's something you can condense in a single shader by layering multiple stripes.

 

Made a procedural bird animation with ASE. It flies up and down semi-randomly depending on world position. It flaps its wings when flying upwards and glides still when flying down. No skinned mesh or bones. It's also particle friendly.

 

Hello.
I'm currently trying to create a post-process that scales and rotates an arbitrary rectangular area in the camera view, but I can't think of a good way to deform the uv based on the center of the rectangle.
Is there any way to achieve this using only nodes?

 

It wasn't limited to post-processing, the rectangle is supposed to be a billboard mesh in 3d space.

 

Nice one!

Curious to see more about that project

Not sure I fully understand the requirements. So the actual billboard is always the same size and you change the rectangle that's rendered or do you adjust the actual billboard?

 

Fixed in the latest version, currently available here: http://amplify.pt/download/

 

Is it possible to access the instanceID in the shader editor to make a shader to use with DrawMeshInstancedIndirect with a compute buffer? Or how should I go about doing something like that?

 

There's a Instance ID node that indicates the per-instance identifier.

You can also access the Unity Instance ID and pass it to a Custom Expression for further manipulation (http://wiki.amplify.pt/index.php?title=Unity_Products:Amplify_Shader_Editor/Instance_ID), use a In Int Port on the Custom Expression node. Maybe this post can help as this is not specific to ASE: https://forum.unity.com/threads/getinstanceid-what-is-it-really-for.293849

 

Hi there! I'm trying to add some lightmap information into my custom lit shaders by multiplying the "Fetch Lightmap Value" node into the Albedo and Emission slots (as seen in the attached image), but I have the issue where if there is no lightmap baked, the shader is displayed as black. Is there a way of detecting whether there is a baked lightmap and ignoring the lightmap node if there is none?

 

Hey there!

You can check if the value is 0(black) or higher: http://wiki.amplify.pt/index.php?title=Unity_Products:Amplify_Shader_Editor/Compare_(AGreaterB)

 

That was my initial thought, but what if sections of the lighmap are pure black? Doesn't this work per-pixel?

 

Hi I'll try to re-phrase my earlier problem in a simpler fashion

I want to achieve the following. If a vertex color is anything but white it should become black. I thought that the floor-node would be a great for that but I get buggy results.

 

Not sure I follow, wouldn't that be equivalent to not having a lightmap? So you'd do your adjustment accordingly. Do elaborate, perhaps we can suggest something else.

Do you have any Vertex Color data on those meshes?

From our test it seems that it could be some sort of precision problem on the Unity rasterizer under these specific conditions, which could cause the interpolated value to be slightly above or below 1 resulting in those differences. This is not necessarily specific to ASE, but we'd be happy to examine any additional data, should you come across additional issues.

You can force the Floor operation to not be interpolated by using the Vertex to Fragment node, you'll get the "real" vertex color value this way.



Hope it helps.

 

I'll elaborate with what I meant:
I'm multiplying the lightmap value with textures. This means that if there's no lightmap, it is multiplying the textures by 0, so I get a black model.
So I can use, as you mentioned, a compare node to fix this: "If lightmap value <= 0, there is no lightmap, so multiply the textures by 1 so that I don't get a black model"
But this compare node will look at each pixel in the lightmap, right? So if there are black pixels in the lightmap textures (Very dark shadows in the lightmap) the shader will say "Ok, lightmap value <= 0, so multiply by 1 (white)" and the darkest shadows of the lightmap will turn white. Am I wrong?

 

In this case, it's the total amount, if there are some none-zero/black pixels, the value will not be zero.

Hope I'm not missing any other piece of info here, let us know if it works for your requirements.

 

Yep, you're right. It works! Thanks!

 

Actually, I've run into another issue. Comparing "Fetch Lightmap Value" with 0 seems to check if the scene has a lightmap baked, but it doesn't check if each object is inside this lightmap, so if I have non-baked objects that share the same material as the lightmapped objects, the non-baked objects try to use the lightmap.
Will I need different shaders for static and non-static objects, or is there a way of checking this per object?

 

I've been experimenting more with the "Fetch Lightmap Value" node, and it's giving me quite a few problems aside from the one I mentioned in my previous post where non-baked objects display visual artefacts.
As you can see in the attached images, visual artefacts are also being generated in baked objects, and I know it's a problem with the shader because it looks ok on a standard material. What could it be?

 

Hello,

Sorry if this is a silly question at this point, but can ASE create custom post processing for HDRP? I want to try using this to create pixelate post processing effect ... I was using Beautify's in BiRP, but now that I switched to HDRP I lost that.

Can this do that? (I already own this for years and love it, this is more a question on the state of HDRP that you can hook into, I know your product is awesome ).

 

Avoid fetching the lightmap on objects that do not have lightmaps; is it defaulting to the first lightmap? Use different shader for those objects.

I'd need to see the actual shader here just to be sure of what could be happening; along with a simple example scene.(a couple of cubes will do)

Will definitely need a sample to understand what could be happening here.

Hi,

We get this question all the time, no problem! HDRP image effect support is being worked on but it's still not available, it's something we're going to offer in a later update. We don't have an exact ETA at the moment.

 

Here's a sample project.

If you swap the environment to a standard material or switch to the "Baked Lightmap" view in the editor you'll see the visual artefacts disappear. They're only visible with the custom shader.
You'll also find a non-static cube using the same material so you can see my first issue. Is there really no way of telling the shader not to use the lightmap data if it's not part of the lightmap?

 

Thanks for sharing it, we'll have a look as soon as possible.

 

Hi all!
I'm a newby to ASE and I'm needing some help to get a corresponding of the following shader in Unity:


- Is there an equivalent node or a way to get the same result of Layer Weight?
- How cold I get something close to the Diffuse BSDF and Glossy BSDF?
- Is there a node to convert the shader values to RGB values as Shader to RGB?
- Am I right to assume that I can use the Blend Operations node as the Mix Node?

Thanks in advance!!

 

I would like to apply my own modified lightmap to meshes but I want to keep Unity's generated UV Layout.
How can I go about getting / applying the Renderer.lightmapScaleOffset from the Mesh's UV2?
Is there a way to get this in the shader so I don't have to make many many unique materials?

 

Hey, welcome aboard!

It can be confusing coming from Blender, there are many techniques/nodes that simply don't exist or work differently in realtime; this is not exactly specific to our editor but the way things work in Unity.

1. There are many "layering nodes", you're most likely looking for the Lerp node but there's also a more akin one aptly named "Layered Blend" which will change the number of inputs based on the weights. For 90% of the cases, you probably want the Lerp node to blend textures or any other values.

2. That concept does not exist in Unity as presented in Blender. You get close to this by choosing the appropriate type, each with its unique Lighting Model, the most common being the Standard PBR Metallic type; other types are available such as the Unlit, Hair, Cloth, etc - this will vary depending on the Unity Renderer used.(Built-in, Universal, HDRP). I should also point out that there's a Custom Lighting mode, this does require some advanced knowledge of shader development but it allows you to define how lighting is rendered.

3. No, may not be required given how shaders are constructed.

4. There's a couple of nodes for this, you're either looking for the common Lerp or the Blend Operations node.

If you're looking for Toon examples, check our Toon Lighting Built-in sample.

I believe the Lightmap Fetch node already handles this. Are you using it directly as a texture? You'll have to pass the required values to the shader for UV adjustment.

 

Hi, I think I found a bug with the "ExtraPrePass" feature under SubShader/Available passes.

I create a new urp unlit shader, and enable the extra pass. Now if I compile, close the canvas, and reopen it, the extrapass node is gone, and the extrapass checkbox is disabled. If I recompile, the multipass is gone. Basically it seems like Amplify's canvas data is not saved in the shader. Any node connected to the extrapass is still there, but not connected anymore).

Using unity 2020.3.3f1 and ASE 1.8.9r3

Thanks

 

Hello,

That's an odd one, so you can replicate it every time?
If so, we'd be interested in looking into that specific shader file. (support@amplify.pt)

Any errors or warnings in the console?

 

I don't think sending a shader would help. Here's a video showing the issue.

No error in the console.
I attached the shader created in this video in case it might help

 

Could help, sometimes it will leave specific tags when it fails that could help us identify problems. (regardless of complexity.

In this case, I think you spotted a UI issue, I'll pass this on to the devs ASAP. You can get it working by enabling it here:

 

Hi all !

I got stuck again:

1. Doesn't the Light Attenuation (on URP Unlit) catches the shadows from the spot nor the point lights?
2. If not, is there an alternative node for that?

Thanks in advance!!

PS: Just saw that point lights had some problems on URP. Is it still a problem?

 

Ah well... Don't know how I missed that.
I think I just never look at this section because some of these settings (if not all of them?) also exist below with more customization.
Thanks for the help

 

Universal RP version can be a factor here; let's continue this over Discord.

I must ask, once more, please do not replicate questions if you're posting this on our Discord server. We're not going to have this conversation in both places, please pick one.

Those additional options are meant to simplify things for users, instead of having to deal with the parameters below; this will be improved in later versions. The UI issue should be correct in the next update.

 

Hi, thanks for good Tool!
I found this image by ASE's asset store.

It seems something of geometry fur shader.
But I didn't found example of this shader.

Isn't this made with ASE?

 

Hey there!

Yes, it's made with ASE but it's not real fur, it's just displaced and animated in a way that it could look like it.

You can play with that with our extrusion built-in sample, try using a more noisy texture to drive the effect and play with the time value.

 

Hello,

I have a project in HDRP.

Is there any way to have a single shader

- draw itself with a tinted albedo if depth is greater and Stencil buffer equals 253 (random number I picked),
- otherwise draw itself without the tinted albedo

I have a project using the same style view as X-Com 2. I have a wall shader which sets the stencil buffer to 253. I can add second material which tests the stencil buffer, and renders a solid color if it passes. That gives me the effect of any part of a character occluded by anything with my wall shader rendering as a solid color on top of the wall.

However, I'm curious if there's a way to do this in a single shader, instead of requiring multiple materials for every character.

Thanks!

Attached is a screenshot of the very simple shader I created in BiRP before I switched to HDRP. You can see its added on a second material. Before I redo this in HDRP, I'm just curious if there's a way to do this not requiring two materials.

 

Hi,
I have a lighting problem in a URP project, using toon shading:



When using 2 directional lights in the same scene, even if their culling mask is setup to their respective layer only, the toon shader lighting is using the wrong light to apply light direction for the toon effect.
(I made a toon shader following the recommendations in the Dev Stream #3 - Custom Lighting Breakdown video)



Below is a quick recap of the test scene I made:

• I use 2 different directional lights inside the same scene:
- one affecting the "characters" layer only (so I can fine tune the light for them)
- and one affecting "default" only (will be used for the environment art, with its own settings)

• I have setup the lights culling masks to affect only their dedicated layers,
and created 2 dummy spheres, each being in one of the 2 layers:




• the "default" sphere uses a standard unity shader,
the "characters" sphere uses a simple toon shader setup as Universal/PBR in here, but I have the same issue with Universal/Unlit (I simplified the shader to the one below to try to identify the issue):




Changing the orientation of the "default" light affects the toon shader, and changing oritentation of the "characters" light affects all the rest in the object (like the light color) but not the orientation of the toon effect:



Is there a way to fix that, and have only the characters light affecting the toon object?
Am I missing a simple setting to have the object material react only to the light affecting the layer it is supposed to be on?

 

Hey there, not absolutely sure actually, HDRP has a few fixed uses for Stencils. What I can do is pass your example onto our devs for additional details. Can you forward us what you're currently using to support@amplify.pt? (material, shaders, simple scene using primitives)

-Unity and URP version
-Amplify Shader Editor version (Window > Amplify Shader Editor > About)

Side note, you'll want to use URP Unlit when doing custom lighting for full control.

Hey there,

We actually have an active ticket for something similar, we'd appreciate it if you could confirm a few details.

 

Sure,
Can you send me a link to this ticket,
or the list of details you want me to confirm?

The ones I suppose you need:
Unity version: 2020.3.6f1
Amplify version: 1.8.9.000
Project render pipeline: URP


I also attach here a package containing the test scene I posted yesterday.


Please let me know what other details you may need.

 

Hi,
Sorry if this problem was discussed before, but could not find any solution online. I am using the Light Attenuation node to create a custom lighting shader for URP. The issue i have is that it creates these kind of glitchy shadows shown in my screenshot. They seem to depend on the max shadow distance definend in my render pipeline asset and only appear behind this distance. Is there anything else i should've put into consideration with using this node?

 

Thanks! It's an internal ticket, I'll add your details, notify our devs, and contact you as soon as possible.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Hey there,

You actually need to use the SRP Additional Light node in URP, this is discussed here:

We used the Lightweight SRP there but just be sure to use Universal/URP, it's the same thing.

 

Hey there, just got some insight from the devs that have been looking into this.

This is the expected behaviour. We were able to access the correct information with the built-in renderer given that Unity ran its Forward Base and Forward Add for each light.However, this is no longer the case in URP, lights are calculated in a single pass. As a result of this change, we have no practical/reliable way of accessing other lights; the World Space Light Dir node returns the light Unity considers to be its main light.

There seems there could be a way to access additional light sources, given the function "GetAdditionalLight(uint i, float3 positionWS)", but we don't have any way of knowing which index corresponds to each light. However, doing so could result in even more problems, we're not actually sure how the light order is handled in some situations.

In short, we're not going to be able to provide support for that type of use given how URP works. We will keep this on our radar for possible future improvements/changes.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

 

Thanks for the quick response.
I've watched the linked video, but unfortunately this doesn't seem to fix the problem. In my test scene i only use one directional light and as i understand it, the SRP Additional Light won't be relevant for the main directional light and its shadow.
I recreated the issue in a fresh URP project and the problem still appears.
Below is a screenshot of the shader i am using.

 

This is sad news. I was going for URP because it is supposed to offer more control over the rendering, too bad that Unity ends up making it harder to get this lighting info. But thanks a lot for the quick feedback.


For info, based on your answer I made a quick and dirty solution to solve my problem, which I am sharing here in case it could be useful to others (but there are probably other simpler solutions).

I created and attached a component to my object that takes the directional light as an input, and updates a vector property in the shader instead of the World Space Light Dir.



The shader update looks like this:



And the code of the component attached to the object:

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4.  
5. [ExecuteInEditMode]
6.  
7. public class Mat_LightDirUpdate : MonoBehaviour
8. {
9.     public Light _light;
10.     private Transform _lightDir;
11.     private Renderer rend;
12.  
13.     void Start()
14.     {
15.         if (_light)
16.         {
17.             _lightDir = _light.transform;
18.             rend = GetComponent<Renderer>();
19.         }
20.     }
21.  
22.     void Update()
23.     {
24.         if (_light)
25.         {
26.             Vector3 _lightDirVector = -(_lightDir.forward);
27.             rend.sharedMaterial.SetVector("_LightDir", _lightDirVector);
28.         }
29.     }
30. }

It works but I'd prefer using a more generic solution, let us know if you manage to solve this one at some point. Thanks again for your quick feedback, and for making Amplify such a great tool!

 

Apologies for the confusion, you should indeed see something like this.


-Can you share your current URP parameters so that we might test the same Shadow Distance on our end?
-What's your current Unity version?
-Using the latest ASE?

Thanks!

That's indeed a valid solution, does involve some extra control on your end. We have this on record, we will keep an eye on URP for possible solutions.

Thanks!

 

Thanks again for your help!

I am using Unity 2020.3.6f1 and the latest ASE version.
Below you can see the settings of my pipeline asset. The glitch only appears on objects that are farther away than the defined "max distance". So it is only visible in large scenes. In my example i've chosen a very small shadow distance to better visualize the problem. I also discovered that increasing the "cascade amount" minimizes the problem.
Thanks!