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

Hey guys,

New day, new build on our website.
Here are the release notes:
Release Notes v1.5.1 dev 03:

• New Samples:
  • Simple Potion Liquid
  • Melting by Gil Damoiseaux
• Improvements:
  • Extended functionalities on 'Custom Expression' node
  • Added Auto-Register toggle to create custom functions even if not connected to output node
  • Added void to Output Type
  • Call Mode toggle is now a Mode dropdown
    • Mode Call now only allows external function calls or inline instructions
    • If a return instruction is detected on code, Mode is set to Create and return type set to void
• Fixes:
  • Fixed Undo issue with property type nodes auto-register option
  • Fixed issue on calculation view direction on tangent space over templates

On this build we've added two new samples.

The first is an official one called,
Simple Potion Liquid:



The second one is a really cool contribution from our amazing community member Gil Damoiseaux and is called,
Melting:



Hope you guys like these new contributions and happy shader creations!

 

We've managed to introduce this functionality in the latest build, more information on the release post above.

Feel free to download the latest version through our website and take it for a spin, feedback is welcome!

 

If somebody is tired to retype unlock code on Amplify site - there's solution to force browser to remember code - just add any letter to your unlock number and next time browser let you select this from combo

 

Hi,
I need to save to disk a normal texture created with the NormalCreate node, but ... How should I pack the output to get correct normalmap to use later on standard shader?
Thanks in advance.

 

Hello! You will likely have to resort to additional steps to extract a texture from a shader, such as the ones discussed in this thread, as this is beyond the scope of our editor.

Have you tried any of the methods discussed there?

 

I already know how to extract a texture from a shader, the problem is the shader output, because the colors of the generated normalmap isn't correct because they are unpacked.
In essence I need to pack an already unpacked normalmap.

 

I see, apologies for not understanding your question correctly, in this case you should use a Scale And Offset node with both values at 0.5, as per the screenshot below.



This will ensure that the generated normal map, which should also be marked as a normal map, can be correctly packed through Unity's texture importer.

 

Does this assets suports the toon outline feature using Lightweight SRP?

Edit: Does supports cel shading too?

Thanks so much.

 

Mmmm...
I can't get good results either

 

Hey there! Amplify Shader Editor is already supporting the Lightweight SRP through the usage of specific Shader Templates, and we currently provide 2 SRP samples within the package, SRP Lightweight Coverage and SRP Lightweight GlintSparkle, in order to help users get started! Feel free to check our announcement video with a quick guide below.

You may create your own toon outline and cel shading effects for Lightweight SRP via shader templates, and we also provide Toon Outline and Lighting as Surface Shader samples with a Custom Lighting model, which may serve as a good reference and starting point.



Please let me know if you have any further questions, thanks!

 

That's not at all expected, could you please send us the texture you've created so that we can test it on our side?

Thanks!

 

Thanks for your answer! I read that the Lightweight Pipeline only supports a Single-pass Forward but using the outline feature requieres more than 1 pass to work, so how is this feature working with Lightweight Pipeline using the Amplify Shader editor?

I hope you help me to clarify if I can use this tools for my purpouses or not.

Thanks so much.

 

No problem! We've tested adding an additional pass to our Lightweight SRP template and it worked without any issue, so it is possible, however, do keep in mind that we don't currently provide a template that supports it at this time, you would have to add the additional passes yourself.

We're working hard on providing more samples in the near future so stay tuned!

 

Here it is:

 

Hi, is there a deferred skin shader sample available along with this package?

Edit:
Why translucency only work in forward render path I really need translucency in deferred (Like Alloy & Uber) is that possible? Thanks.

 

Argh!!
Do Forget my last probleme, it was my fault, I forgot to convert the texture format (from RGBFloat to RGB32) before save it.
Thank you very much by your patience

 

A question for ASE guys.
I have a shader with a light direction check. This check is multiplied with some textures and then it goes in the albedo channel.
The issue is that, when I turn off the lights or I set 0 as intensity, the shader goes full black.
The light dir check is something like this


Is it correct this behaviour?
Why the node editor render the preview correctly but the scene viewport not?
I can say that the node editor is rendering correctly because if I rotate the light (with intensity = 0), the preview is correct.
Is it a bug? if not, is there a way to always consider the light dir both in scene (or game) viewport?

Thanks in advance

 

@marcatore - to get the light direction in my Polyverse Skies shaders, I use a little script to get the light direction (or any other object's direction) and then send the value to a global vector. In my shader I get that global vector and use it as light direction. This way you can have scenes with the directional light turned off or 0 intensity, but still use its direction. Script attached. Hope it helps.

 

@BOXOPHOBIC really appreciated. I'll surely try it. Thanks in advance

 

Is there a way to set an offset for the texture UVs in the triplanar sampler?

 

That would require a lot of custom shader work to make this happen. And Unity doesn't natively come with a pipeline for supporting Skin shaders like in Alloy, which is a custom solution... I have been working on my own shaders for hair and eyes with ASE, and waiting for these features to make their way in.

 

i wrote this a while back... this might help, this needs some modifying though, im using alloy now

 

I'll take a look at this in a bit. I have very specific things I am looking for in a skin shader... and Alloy is getting close to it.

 

Here's a little scritping bug we found.
In the FunctionNode.cs at line 864.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. string[] guids = AssetDatabase.FindAssets( "t:AmplifyShaderFunction " + m_filename );
3.  if( guids.Length > 0 )
4.  {
5.      loaded = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<AmplifyShaderFunction>( AssetDatabase.GUIDToAssetPath( guids[ 0 ] ) );
6.               ...
7. }
8.  

It simple take the 0th element of the array despite that this might not be the asset we are trying to find

There should be double check to make sure the names exactly match like below.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. string assetPath = null;
3. foreach (var guid in guids)
4. {
5.       assetPath = AssetDatabase.GUIDToAssetPath(guid);
6.      var name = System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(assetPath);
7.       if (name.Equals(m_filename, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
8.        {
9.                 break;
10.         }
11. }
12. loaded = AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath<AmplifyShaderFunction>(AssetDatabase.GUIDToAssetPath(assetPath) );
13.  

Would love to see this will be fixed in further updates

 

Hello, although we don't currently have a skin shader sample, we're hoping to provide one in the near future.

Unfortunately, Translucency is a forward only effect.

No problem, thank you for getting back to us regarding the problem being solved!

Thank you for sharing this information and script!

Hello! There are a few differences in how our shaders behave while having no lights present in the scene, or with their intensity set to 0, but we'll have to take a look into your shader's setup in order to be sure that its producing the expected behavior.

Could you send us your shader via support@amplify.pt so that we may investigate this? Thanks!

Thank you for getting in touch, unfortunately, our Triplanar node is just a convenience node for a general purpose triplanar effect, in order to achieve what you intend you'll have to set up your own triplanar solution, I suggest that you check out our TriplanarProjection sample as a starting point.

Thank you for sharing!

Hey there, thank you for reporting this issue, we'll be sure to fix this in an upcoming update, I'll get back in touch as soon as it becomes available!

 

@OP3NGL I had a look at your shader and though it functions, there are issues with it that should be addressed. One of them is definitely the gloss and specularity, and the overall brightness of the albedo map.

Once templates work, we can reverse engineer Alloy and add a lot more features, including blur passes and TSD

 

Cheers, I thought I'd have to roll my own but had overlooked that sample as I thought it was just a demo for the general purpose one.

 

yea, if we could reverse engineer alloy & work with ASE, that would great, since alloy now is free

 

Hi! I'm a very satisfied owner of almost every amplify product including the ASE.

What troubles me is the upcoming Unity's graph shader editor. From my point of view, it is very hard to compete with something free and "official" (if it won't suck of course)

How do you see a future of ASE?

 

Hello,

I've been trying lately to create a simple lambert custom lighting shader(similar to ase BlinnPhong function) with proper lightmap support, but didn't manage to do it. Right now unity supports 4 different lightmap types: baked indirect, subtractive distance shadow mask, shadow mask and the first one is the only one that is working as it should with my setup (direct light + indirect light).



I could use the built in Lambert light of course, but I would like be able to use an enum switch to have multiple lighting types in the same shader.



1.First thing I tried is to sample the unity_ShadowMask texture in a custom expression and handle all the shadow blending myself. For some reason it is working ok in unity 2018.1, but not in older versions, even the texture is defined from 5.6. The code: UNITY_SAMPLE_TEX2D(unity_ShadowMask, lightmapUV); The error: undefined variable "unity_ShadowMask" unable to find compatible overloaded function "tex2D(error, half2)"

2. Looking at Lighting.cginc, the LightingLambert function look quite simple. As I can see, both LightingLambert and LightingBlinnPhong are the same, the only difference is the direct light passed. Is there a way to use the LightingLambert function, but with a custom direct light input with custom expression?



3. How hard it would be to have the code from above in a node, where you pass only your custom direct light and the indirect lighting, shadow blending... are handled internally.

I'm not sure if any of the ideas are good or could work, I'm not quite an expert, but maybe somebody have some ideas on how to approach this

Thanks!

 

Hi again,

Any plans to add custom references for Src / Dst / Zwrite?
It would be an easy solution to have one shader with all the blending modes available with a simple custom inspector and a float enum.


Thanks!

 

Hi,
First I would like to thank amplify for the mazing work.

I'm running into a compatibility issue with polybrush vertex painter tool ((recently made free and integrated into unity) and gpu instancing with a shader made with amplify.
The problem does not seem to occur with shader forge so that's why i'm posting here. (I can see in the shader code of polybrush they were created with shader forge)

Here is how to repro

Create a very simple shader with amplify to test vertex color (vertex color node in albedo). Create two cubes and paint different vertex color on them with polybrush (red on the first one, green on the second one) It will create additionnal vertex streams. Then put the amplify shader you just created. The vertex color will display correctly only with GPU instancing unchecked. And that's not the case with what seems to be a shader forge created shader.

So, I don't really know if it's a bug or something esle (maybe a box to check in amplify ?)

Thanks in advance for your precious time and help,

Jonathan

Ps : some gifs with gpu instancing unchecked and checked

https://gifs.com/gif/working-0Vm3K3

https://gifs.com/gif/not-working-l5m611

ps 2 : I've made some test on the profiler too. It seems that amplify shader is making gpu instancing working 100 % (great for performances but incompatible with additionnal vertex streams) The shader forge shader on the other hand will instance half of the draw calls, but will display correctly additionnal vertex streams.

 

I want to create a simulation for Arc metal welding and wanted to create melt metals shader.
Its possible to create something like this melt, in amplify shader ?
Let me know if anyone can make it.
If it’s possible, we can have payment to get the shader.

 

This one is simple, later today we'll release a new build with exposed references for those (although zwrite already has it). We are still missing them for templates tho, so you have to wait a lit bit more if you are using templates. Just be advised, you can not use just one float enum to control multiple settings. Unity does it by having a custom material that sets multiple different values to each setting. Likewise if you want to have just one dropdown controlling a bunch of different settings you need to create your own custom material inspector with a similar deal. Shouldn't be too difficult and the only reason we don't do it ourselves is to make our shaders independent of the editor.

I guess I just need to do proper research into it. When I did the initial support for baked and indirect lighting I might have missed some parts of the code. Also, if I'm not mistaken part of it comes from the fact that we are still support unity 5.5 and if I'm not mistaken not all of those are supported in 5.5. I might need to do add some compiler directives to change the final result for different versions.

Regardless of that the Light struct only contains basic information like light color and direction, the magic is in the gi struct and in calls that set it up. You can see them if you compile a surface shader into vertex/frag variants. Most of which comes down to calling the proper functions to setup the lightmap uvs and calculate the gi contribution. That's what both indirect light nodes should be doing. I say should because while I did lots of testing they are easy break so I might be missing something. Finally it could also be due to some defines or keywords settings, because unity standard material inspector sets a lot of stuff, ours is probably missing something due to the nature of not knowing what exactly any particular shaders requires. I very much prefer adding proper support and options to those nodes instead of allowing weird hacks.

This might take a while tho since there's lots of potential places to look for. If you are in a hurry and if you already have something to test on and want to help just send me a test project or scene for those 4 cases. I might have missed something before for the lack of a proper test scene :|

 

No problem, glad it helps!

Hey there, thanks!

We've actually approached this subject before, in sum we’ll definitely keep an eye on Unity's Shader Graph development for any relevant features and conventions that it might introduce. In any case, our development path somewhat differs from what Unity currently offers. You can count on us for mature and future-proof shader development, always with responsive support and blazing fast iteration times that you can expect from Amplify Creations.

Also, ASE already supports the creation of Lightweight SRP compatible shaders, and this sort of integration is beneficial as it defines standards and pushes us all to improve our products. We believe that we can coexist since there will always be a demand for unique products with distinguishing features.

More information in the following sources:
http://amplify.pt/a-growing-family-of-products-created-with-amplify-shader-editor/
https://forum.unity.com/threads/bes...der-creation-tool.430959/page-59#post-3408785

Hello, thank you for taking the time to report this and for the kind words!

We'll have to investigate this issue before we can share any insight, however, I believe that you can control how GPU Instancing behaves through #pragma instancing_options, forcemaxcount:batchSize, via our Additional Pragmas parameter within the Output Node.

Please let us know if this helps, we'll get back in touch as soon as we have any developments regarding the issue!

Hello, it's definitely possible to create that sort of effect, in fact, we've even recently released a community submitted sample that simulates a metal melting effect, which can serve as a good starting point.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/bes...der-creation-tool.430959/page-62#post-3440722

 

I also use Marmoset Toolbag 3 at times... and their Skin Shader is BOSS... and so is the one for Ryse.

 

Hey, guys... I just discovered how to add headers in my shader code. But is there a way to do this in the graph (Aside from using a shader function) so I don't lose my changes? I think we need an option that will collapse selected nodes into a shader function with the exposed parameters.

 

Hey guys,

We've just uploaded a new build into our website.

Here are the release notes.

Release Notes v1.5.1 dev 04:

• New Node:
  • Function Subtitle
    • Allows creation for custom subtitles on Shader Functions
• New Shader Functions:
  • Perturb Normal
  • Cotangent Frame
• * Improvements:
  • Can now assign property to both blend modes and operations
  • Removing carriage return when saving 'Custom Expression' node code on meta
  • Improved restrictions on Shader Functions outputting Matrix type data
  • Name is carried over Pasted/Duplicated 'Custom Expression' nodes
  • Custom Editor/Inspector option is now available over templates
  • Updated both Lightweight template and samples to new beta version
    • Template now support vertex offset and alpha test
  • Nodes internal data can be viewed directly on canvas
    • Can be turned on/off through the 'I' key
  • Added Editable If Custom Drawer by BinaryCats
  • Dynamic interpolator cap now respecting pass choice on graph
  • Updating current templates to be dynamically cap'ed
  • Light Color' and 'World Space Light Dir' nodes now behave properly when used with lightmaps
• Fixes:
  • Fixed issue with incorrectly trying to write fragment instructions on template without specified frag code area
  • Fixed issue where reference 'Function Switch' nodes were not displaying their option in all cases
  • Fixed wire node Undo issues

We'll answer all pending questions as soon as we can.

Happy shader creations!

 

Yeah, you can add a custom attribute in your property nodes and type something like "Header(My Title)" without the quotes, like this:

 

SWEET!!!!

 

what does cotangent frame do?

 

Thanks for the detailed answer. I just upgraded to the last version, really nice stuff. ASE is geting better and better.

I managed to use the blend modes and a custom shader GUI to add blend modes exposed on material. I'm not quite sure if the shaderGUI script is written as is should be, but it's working
I saw that a lot of people asked for this feature, so if you think that it would help, I'll be glad to see it included in the ASE package. For anyone interested, the package is attached. It was exported without dependencies, so need to have ASE imported to have the the assets from below.



Regarding the lightmap issue, I'll send you test a scene a bit later. Thanks again!

 

And the lightmap scene. The subtractive lm mode is working correctly now. The others are not working with my lambert light. When using the Standard Surface Light node with custom lighting, there is a bit of light bouncing differences, but it is working properly. The lightmap is set to AutoGenerate, so just swich between lightmap types to see the differences. If you need anything else, please let me know. Unity 5.6. Thank you !

Edit: reuploaded package.

 

Cotangent Frame, calculates a TBN matrix ( Tangent, Binormal, Normal ) without requiring pre-calculated tangent data from the 3D model.
This method is a bit more intensive on the pixel shader but require less data from the model itself, thus it's a tradeoff.
We also added the Perturb Normal shader function which uses this TBN matrix to perturb normals, a bit like our already existing World Normal. Please notice that perturbing a normal with World Normal or Perturb Normal generates slightly different results.

 

Thx a ton for the scene!

I did made some changes yesterday to two nodes that were breaking the final result in the lightmaps, I actually already had an issue some other user reported with them so I killed two birds in one stone (no birds actually hurt in the process xD )

I'll be looking at it asap. I can tell tho the color differences in the "custom standard light" example is because you need to plug the Albedo port in the master node with the same thing you plug in the standard light node (same of the emission port). Both of those are special for the meta pass which contain the lightmap information.

I'll report back when I find something.

 

I totally forgot about the meta pass. Let me test it again and I'll get back to you asap.

Edit: The indirect is correct now on Custom Standard Light and Custom Legacy Diffuse (still no direct light in shadow mask mode on legacy diff).

 

I think I finally found the culprit. Both light color and light dir are handle differently between different versions of unity, I still need to figure out the versions but I can confirm at least what you saying previously about the shift in 5.6. I'll probably add a shader preprocessor instead of script preprocessor to filter these to make a shader work in all versions without recompiling.

 

Glad to hear that you found the problem

 

After further testing the left most version using just nodes in unity 5.6 does not render shadows correctly for the static items. I tried everything I could and I concluded to be a unity bug in 5.6 that gets fixed on 2017.1. I don't know if it's a version you need but we tried everything and nothing worked. It simply refuses to get the shadowmask correctly in 5.6.

The final fix for all other versions will come in the next build.

 

Hey guys,

New day, new build over our website and, as always, here are the release notes.

Release Notes v1.5.1 dev 05:

• Improvements:
  • Added previews to nodes
    • Desaturate
    • Grayscale
    • Posterize
    • Simple Contrast
  • Normal type input ports now show the correct default tangent vector on nodes internal value previewer
    • Indirect Diffuse Light
    • Indirect Specular Light
    • Fresnel
    • World Normal
• Fixes:
  • Fixed possible issue with 'Desaturate' node on PS4
  • Fixed issues with Undo/Redo operations over Wire nodes
  • Fixed light color and light dir info on 'Light Color'
    • Now takes into account Unity different behaviors between versions
  • Fixed issue on loading canvas on ASE tabs pointing to inexistent resources

Happy shader creations!