Feedback Wanted: Shader Graph

The announcement seemed to imply that the shader graph system now supports the HD render pipeline. Is that correct?

 

How do you access _TransparencyLM in the shader graph, or is it because only Lightweight is supported currently that it's not available?

 

That's a reason why I think you should be able to import/export out the graph as text like XML or something. So that people could make shader graphs with scripts or batches etc. Also if someone was creating a little program that converts legacy shaders into the new shader graph system, an intermediate step of creating an XML file of the shader might be useful. Of course that depends how `open' the shader format should be.

A question: What graphics card specifications will be required for the new shader system? I can imagine adding too many nodes would easily overwhelm many laptop graphics cards. Will it tell you the minimum spec for particular graphs?

 

I've been trying to keep up with the eight pages of remarks in this thread but I may have missed it. I think having the overall instruction count for the shader graph would be an important performance marker. It may help pinpoint bottlenecks further in production. Otherwise I think it looks great, looking forward to trying it out with HD.

 

IIRC a shader graph is just some JSON. Pretty sure thats what it generated when i tried it out at the beginning of the beta. You could probably check for yourself, let me know if that's correct.

Edit: Looks like it is JSON - https://github.com/UnityTechnologie...ph_ExampleLibrary_Project/Assets/ShaderGraphs

 

Shader Graph disappeared from Package Manager. How it can be installed now?

 

Try installing 'Render-pipelines.lightweight' Version 1.0.0 (Beta)

 

I would like to see this as well.

Right-click the sphere and select what you want or a custom mesh. The Quad will work as your plane.

 

Will the properties of these two nodes be exposed in the inspector so they can be changed at any time?
Select different options from the dropdown and edit the sliders without having to go into the shader every time.

 

FEEDBACK POST (2018.1.09b)

I am currently going through all the UE4 sub-graphs and trying to implement some of them in Unity shader-graph. Instead of a million posts I will just keep updating this post as to what I find, in the hopes it will help you out in features and debugging. I will also add the sub-shaders I create in the link below, in case anyone wants to use them. (I would also be interested in any other shader-graphs that have been ported)

Commendation:
- Love the shader-graph. Great tool.
-shader-graph is much faster loading and showing live preview than ue4.
- I like the property inputs/naming.

Features Needed: (In somewhat order of importance)
- Nested sub-shader graphs. (Helps to build up tools and simplify more complex graphs.
- Configurable input. (middle mouse button is not good for laptop users)

Spoiler: Particle Nodes

- Particle Color Node
- Particle Direction Node
- Particle Motion Blue Fade Node
- Particle Radius Node
- Particle Random Node
- Particle Relative Time Node
- Particle Size Node
- Particle Speed Node

Would be nice features: (But not high priority)
- Custom node. (where you can add your own shader code referencing the inputs. (ex: max(Input_1, Input_2)) <- this would run this code with the inputs.
- Description box for sub-shader and main shader. (So you can explain what the shader/sub-shader does)
- A way to be able to simply change the input property type in a sub-shader. (Right now to go from vector3 to texture2d you need to create a new property, delete the old node and re-hookup the new property node.) In the blackboard side it would be nice to just have a drop-down to change the type)
- Would be nice to be able to label outputs.

Bugs:
- sometimes node connection lines are not deleted when a node is deleted. (only happened once)

Shader-graph nodes can be found here. (Check once in awhile as I update them.)

 

This is not a bug. The "Channel Mask" node is dynamic. its channel outputs are the same value as input

So if you add a vector 1 it will only output one channel plus the "Everything" mode
- Vector 1/equavilent = 1 output + Everything
- Vector 2/equavilent = 2 outputs + Everything etc



More images in the spoiler section below (Not to take up space on the page)

Spoiler

It used to show all channels in the earlier versions but got changed sometime along the line.

 

Quick question; how do you reference an object's normals? For the triplaner projection node.

 

Ahh perfect thank you!

 

anyone know if its user friendly or not? Could a beginner with some tutorials easily create shaders?

 

So far I am finding it fairly similar to ue4's material editor. So, yes, it is fairly easy.

 

I note that there are some more graph examples to be found here:

https://github.com/keijiro/ShaderGraphExamples

 

Im so happy seeing that Keijiro is using Shader Graph.

 

People are using it to make Shaders; so I would say that it is user friendly.

 

Did you try the Normal Vector node in Object space?

 

Hello guys , i have Unity 2018.1 .0b9 , can i now implement shader graph to my project? If yes how? I've already installed the LWRP from the package manager but the shader graph menu creation is not here. Do i need to do something else? Thank

 

@manran Looks like shader graph is now embedded in the render pipe, so you might already have it installed if you installed lightweight 1.0.0 Beta.

The menu items to create a shader got moved to here

Right click project windows or select create Button (Create > Shader > PBR Graph/Unlit graph and Sub Graph)

If it's not showing up then you can install the Shader Graph from the Package manager and it should show up

 

No problem man. Appreciate the sub graphs you made. I made a few material functions/sub graphs from UE4 as well as some custom ones when I was heavily testing Shader Graph. Will probably share those as well, though some are kind of specific but someone might find them useful.

 

Ah that was exactly what i needed. Thanks a lot!

 

Thank you so muck i was searching for "shader graph" so it became PBR graph etc. but i get a new issue now . everything is pink, i've tried on my project, and on a new project but no success. what could be the cause?

 

Ah yes, Now you need to create and assign a render pipeline (In this case the lightweight one).



then assign it to the Graphics setting

Edit > Project Settings > Graphics

 

Is it possible to make a multi-pass material with shader-graph? If so, how?
Thanks.

 

I might have found a bug with the Render Texture in combination with the shader graph. If I use an Unlit/Texture or LightweightPipeline/Standard Unlit shader, a texture can be copied to a Render Texture by Graphics.Blit. An Unlit shader graph with a connected texture only outputs a black texture using the same method.

 

I am unable to use Shader Graph on my home computer.
The issue is simple : I cannot see the result of the shader it self in the PBR Master block. And obviously, the material using that shader also doesn't work (objects are completely invisible).

At first I thought it might be the alpha or something but whatever I set, nothing is visible.

Any idea what could be causing this?

I testing with 2018.1.0b9. Thanks.

 

Another question. Is Camera Direction in tangent space? If so, can anyone tell my why this is not working? It is a bumpoffset or ParallaxMapping node I am working on. It should offset the uv coords based on the heightmap and camera direction.

 

Hi, how do you construct a Vector 2 dynamically? Like if you have value foo and value bar, can I feed them into a node that turns it into one Vector 2 object? For me it would make sense if you could drag straight into a Input/Basic/Vector 2 node. It seems that node is for constant values, but then it could be used for both constants and mutables.

 

Use a 'Combine' Node.

 

Do you have a Lightweight Render Pipeline Asset applied to the SRP Settings in Graphics Settings?

 

Please, implement vertex material paintig for assets and landscape

For example

 

Not related to Shader Graph; but we recently acquired Probuilder which has a Vertex Painting Tool.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/02/1...g-integrated-in-editor-advanced-level-design/

 

@Andy-Touch, would you happen to have any info to share on creating custom nodes? I'm super curious about the abilities we'll get from that.

 

Nope, I have not seen the API yet for creating custom nodes.
However, Shader Graph can be downloaded from this GitHub Repository (https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ShaderGraph) and you could take a look at the code for the built-in nodes. No idea if they are representative of the custom node API but it is probably a good starting place to dive into.

 

Hi there, a couple of questions, I'm using the lightweight pipeline.

- if I want to do a depth test, testing against the z-buffer, do I have to explicitly have to mark "depth texture" in the asset settings? Is this slower than a simple depth test would have been in the old pipeline?
- is it possible to dynamically set whether a shader will write to the depth buffer or not?
- is it possible to change the shader position in the render queue, beyond just switching between transparent and opaque?
- at the moment it seems dynamic batching is disabled, is this deliberate or will it come back?
- is it possible to specify external names of properties, so they can be more easily set from code, for example by the Material.SetTexture() method. at the moment properties have external names like "Texture_329A7734" and "Cubemap_F82009E"

 

Anyone has an idea on how they created the volume fog in the BOOK of ThE DEAD demo, with the
HD RP ? Thanks

 

They're using the old Atmospheric Scattering from The Blacksmith demo.

 

And as far as I know plan to do a proper version at some point.

 

Yup, Later this year they will add their own Atmospheric Scattering to HDRP.
https://forum.unity.com/threads/wil...ality-in-rendering.512495/page-2#post-3373828

 

Will they also add this https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/VolumetricLighting ?

It would be great to have complete suite.

 

They are adding Volumetric Lighting as well, but they are making their own one. https://github.com/Unity-Technologi...ne/HDRenderPipeline/HDRP/Lighting/Volumetrics

The one that you linked was made by Robert Cupisz, HDRP's one is being made by Evgenii Golubev.

 

Well their emphasis is on unifying as much as possible in the HD pipe and that very much includes sky/fog atmospheric scattering, local fog, and the various kind of lights. Given that the area lights research they did was a big part of that volumetric lighting (aka Adam Volumetric Fog) you mention, and the polygonal area lights are part of the HD pipeline, it is quite reasonable to assume that broadly equivalent volumetric lighting features will end up in the HD pipeline eventually. How much of the existing code and concepts are ported over from that one to the HD pipeline to make this happen remains to be seen. And they've been focussed on lots of other stuff in the HD pipeline so far, so talk of timescales has been kept suitably vague. Long term I would expect the modern, unified and flexible nature of the HD pipeline to enable us all to get quite a bit more out of the lighting and volumetric side of things than we've been able to so far using various examples provided in recent years by way of sample code from impressive demo effects. I'm very much looking forward to seeing this stuff evolve as part of a pipeline rather than being isolated projects that dont encourage integration and compatibility.

 

I have tested this out a few days ago and can confirm that Polybrush and Shader Graph materials work quite well together.

 

I have been beta testing as much as possible. Currently trying foliage. I am having a problem creating proper foliage with proper shadow casting. Is there any way with the current version? Is cutout needed? I have pretty well tried everything.

Thanks

 

I tried the shader graph.

1. Is it possible to see and modify the cg shader code generated ? All I can see is the asm code by compiling the shader - not what I need.
2. When importing a mesh to preview the shader in realtime ( lower right corner ) I cannot pan the mesh position in the preview window - try importing the Arches mesh, you cannot see it entirely. Can I pan the mesh - do you plan to add this feature ?
3. Feeding an RGBA (4) to an Albedo (3) creates an annoying feeling, further enhanced by not being able to see the code that shader graph generates. Back in the day, the grandfather of the Shader graph, Strumpy editor or something like that, generated unoptimized code for mobile, but at least it could be inspected and fixed.
4. Create a new shader graph and select it in the project panel, go to the inspector and click the new shiny preset button - bang, Unity crashes.

I would appreciate an answer on 1 and 2, thanks.

 

Right Click the Master Node and select 'Copy Shader'.
Paste it into a text editor.

However, modifying and saving it won't apply the changes back to the Shader Graph.

 

Nice! I haven't tried Probuilder/Polybrush at all yet but I can't wait to play around with it in combination with Shader Graph. Maybe that will be the next example project I put together...