I'm a bit lost.

Hi!
I'm new to unity, at first i bough the indie version so i have a few questions about shaders.

I'm used to create my shaders in ShaderFX because i used to work with another engine, but now i'm trying to do some little games with Unity.

Can i use my ShaderFX shaders in Unity Indie?

and How can i do that? because i tried to modify a toon shader that comes with Unity but i cannot use it...of course maybe the modification is bad, because i don't know anything about programming shaders, i do everything with shaderfx.

Please some help is really apreciated, i'm a bit lost, i saw the documentation, but i don't have the things clear yet.

Thanks.

 

I'm with you here. I'm baffled too.

It doesn't help that it's not at all clear what shaders actually work in Indie. Not much as far as I can tell.

It would certainly help me if each page in the manual had a "Pro feature only" lable on it the way SketchUp does.

Also a Indie section in the forum would be great as it seems most people have the pro version and there is very little here for the poor Indie people.

 

I don't know what you mean...every standard shader works in Indie. Anything in "Pro standard assets" won't work in Indie (obviously), but everything else does. As far as I know, everything that the docs cover that is Pro-only is noted as such.

You'll find that the opposite is true. The thing is, Indie is a great value and there isn't actually a huge amount that Pro has that Indie doesn't. Since 99% of everything discussed here applies to both, I don't see that there's any point in an Indie section, or a Pro section for that matter.

--Eric

 

The only thing (rendering-wise) not available in pro is render to texture, which prevents you from doing shadow maps, post-effects and other stuff that might require that.

I have to admit that I have not checked out the toon shader that comes with Unity, - does it really require Pro?

 

No, it doesn't use render textures so it's fine in Indie.

As for being lost, you might have to read the shader docs more than once...programming shaders isn't trivial. Just about everything in the shader docs applies equally to Indie and Pro.

--Eric

 

Yeah, I already said this in another thread, but I'm really curious what limitations you're running into with shaders in Indie. It concerns me because there is this weird common perception with new users that Indie doesn't include basic shaders like bumps and lightmaps, or the ability to create custom shaders, and this of course just isn't true. Indie is capable of making some crazy shaders... 90% of what Pro can do.

Please elaborate on what you're having issues with.

 

No reflections, refractions, effects, glows shadows...
I don't know why I have shadow settings for things when it doesn't work.
It's actually really hard to make any thing look natural without these things.

Also I was following the excellent Learnmesilly tutorials and when it came to a lightmap in that it totally didn't work for me. I went over it several times. The tutorial created a lightmap from a directional light positioned to be the sun to cast a more realistic light accross the landscape. I had all the controls and followed it carefully but it did not work.

I was trying to get a simple water effect working, the default Indie one is very plastic. In the end I gave up.

If you go through the wiki pretty much every sample shader says it only works in pro.

It really isn't clear in the manual to newcomers what works and what doesn't.

The SketchUp manual has every page marked with "Pro only" so you aren't wasting your time reading through it and trying to figure it out. I find the same frustration on the forum trying to figure out someone's excellent solution for something, and people are great about helping here, only to find, again, that it ain't going to work for me.

Why not a Indi section like a Shader section or a Script section?
People wouldn't have to stay ion it for general questions but it might help for specific ones.