Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

Wow, this looks very intriguing! Have been looking for a proper shader pack on the asset store and its so difficult finding a package that has everything I need. This could be a very nice solution though.

Just wnadering is there a way that you can add a distortion node as well to add some distortion to make some shaders that have a more special FX/Spell feel and look to it.

Also I know this has been mentioned before but Image/post precessing effects support will also go a long way.

Finally, I just wanted to recheck how is the Deferred Lighting support in Shader Forge how many shaders fully support it and how many shaders can at least run in Deferred Lighting properly even if they are rendered using Forward Rendering? Are there any nodes/shaders that dont work with Deferred Lighting at all or glitches out in it.

 

EDITED... Does this work with Skyshop? If it does work proper, will purchase!

Regards,

Gary

 

SF can use Skyshop cubemaps, which is very useful for IBL: http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/images/progress_b016_ibl.jpg

But that's about as far as Skyshop support in SF goes at the moment! I haven't yet added support for their global parameters etc., it's something we're going to do in the future, most likely

 

EDITED - I am part of the Shader Forge club now !!!!

Ace,

Well I still can't believe I missed all this.... I have been head's down on some stuff I guess... This is impressive and will be purchasing today!!!

Regards,

Gary

 

Distortion is quite easy! Just add a distortion pattern to UV coordinates and plug it into the UV input of a texture, and you just made distortion

Similar to this:

Shader Forge doesn't generate deferred passes at all at the moment, which means that when you're in deferred rendering, SF shaders will be forward rendered, this breaks, as far as I know, translucency, tessellation, and probably a few other things that I haven't noticed yet.

Deferred is a huge topic and a massive feature.
It would take a lot of work to get it up and running smoothly with SF, because deferred has a completely different shader pipeline, but it is something I will look into after the 1.0 release!

 

hi Acegikmo!
Is it possible to access an exposed value ? I tried this.renderer.material.SetFloat("_myNodeName",myFloat) but it doesn't work.
I want to inject the world direction vector of an object into an exposed vector4.

Thanks for your work!

 

Use SetVector instead!
Also, make sure you are 100% certain you got the name right, and that the shader is saved

 

I figured out the underscore of the generic name node_xxx disappear in internal name (plus the first underscore of course).
Lesson 01 : Set custom name for my nodes.

Thanks!

 

Just got this beauty.. but I cant donwload it because my unity is 4.3.1.. I need 4.3.2

That is something that you should see in the configuration.. because it says it is compatible with Unity 4.2+ but you can only download it with 4.3.2

Awesome asset.. Thank you very much.. I am testing it since 0.13-0.14.. aways awesome..

Should it work with Unity PS3??

 

I understand that the latest version 4 is needed to run this, but what are the version requirements for the resulting shaders? My Unity Pro version is still 3.5.7, but could I develop shaders for my project using the free version 4.3.2? Sorry if this has already been asked -- the thread is getting rather long.

 

SF should work in 4.2, but I think I uploaded it through 4.3, which is why the asset store is complaining, most likely.
The shaders SF creates should work in 3.5 as well, as far as I know!

And yes, this thread is long, I'll make a new thread in the asset store section soon

I can't see why not! I haven't tried, but it should work.

 

Firstly, congratulations! Secondly, finally a visual shader editor!
Looks great, i really love the previews in all the nodes!! And awesome job with the node explanations on the website! One thing bugs me really a lot though, it needs a zoom option for the graph! It gives me head aches that i cant see the whole tree at the same time!

I'm not sure where i read it in this thread but is cutout transparency working with shadows? If not, that would be really important for the shaders that i intend to make with Shaderforge. Well, enough for now, lets plug some nodes together

 

(In Shader Forge) How can I create a mirror that doesn't rely on cube maps and has direct reflection of whats in front of it?

 

Thanks!
Zooming is planned, feel free to vote on it to increase priority:
http://shaderforge.userecho.com/top...to-see-all-of-the-nodes-being-used-connected/

Cutout shadows should work fine! Let me know if you run into any issues

You'll need quite a lot of custom scripting to get that to work. You need a secondary camera set up along with a Render Texture, and so forth. You can take a look at Unity's Pro water shader setup

 

What features are missing/less, if using unity free(indie) ? (sorry didnt read all the pages)

ps. when going to "Visit Publisher's Website", the shader forge link is not really visible (firefox)

 

Pretty much everything works in Unity Free. There are no limitations imposed from my end, however, there are limitations by Unity.
However, I am forcing Render Textures (Pro-only feature) to work in Unity Free too, so they will appear to work, but they won't work when you make a build.

As for the link - strange! I'll reroute the link instead

 

Is it possible to create a material shader, which looks similar to SSAO?
Cheers

 

SSAO is a post process shader. Do you mean baked AO on meshes in general or the post FX specifically?

 

Wonderful, cutout shadows work indeed fine! Left a vote and posted a new (very obvious) idea, was surprised that its not in there already: Marquee selection.

Also i am wondering, how can i disconnect cables? I could not find info about this ...

 

Both of those are already possible, and the included readme.txt says how to do it

 

Thanks, stupid me! Of course, i was expecting it to be on the website since all the node explanations are ther as well!
Maybe you should add these important infos there as well, so you have not to deal with blind users like me on a regular basis

 

Generally the FX, maybe checking the bending of the vertices,but I take it from your answer, it's only post production

 

This.. this is so incredibly awesome I can't even describe it. This isn't 5 stars. It's freaken 100 stars. Within 5 minutes, using the great examples and documentation, I have a flowing water shader with refraction for my 2.5D tile based game that looks exactly like what I've always wanted it to look like. I no longer need "Flow", which is an entire asset just for flowing textures.

 

Bought it, so happy. We've been waiting for something like this for so long, Thank you. I'm just having some issues editing shaders I've just thrown together. I load it and shaderforge just sits like this stuck, http://puu.sh/6gnAu.png

Oh and I've got an error, we would try to fix it but shaderforge just gums up, thank you again.
http://puu.sh/6gnpv.png

Thank you for reading

 

I'd like to purchase shader forge, but because of the new Unity version (4.3.2) is not installed on my machine (I have 4.3.1), I can't. Is it possible to upload a version that will work with those of us who didn't want to disable the webcam on a mac (which was the "fix" in the 4.3.2 upgrade)?

 

Ok, got my flow shader working, but trying to figure out how to generate a UV gradient based off the RG channels of a texture. ATM I have the flow based off the meshes UV coordinates, but I want it based off a flowmap texture (RG channels). Any hints how to go about that?

Edit: Nevermind! I was able to have something even better for my usage. I just used the UV rotate and added a slider to it. Now I can easily slide it to rotate the flow!

 

Apologies, I guess I should have said something like animated displacement, forgive my noobness, Im not quite too sure what it is called but I guess the easiest way to describe it is like an animated parallax mapping shader. So that you can get effects like weird liquid like spells and orbs or artifacts, as well as lava or toxic sludge etc. Especially when used in conjunction with emissive and specularity maps and making the material semi transparent. Otherwise I guess a nice workaround could be to use the method you explained to me for creating animated displacement and just plug it into the UV paramaeter of a paralax mapping node? Otherwise I guess you would need to use some kind of displacement effect (similiar to underwater effects) but that uses Image effects which isnt supported yet. Correct me if Im wrong though as I am a bit of a noob when it comes to shaders.

Ah well this is unfortunate I could probably just use it for now in order to get accustomed to it and start creating basic shaders, then hopefully by the time for release of our project it will be supported. For now we can also just use other alpha shaders not made with Shader Forge that do support deferred rendering, so that we can still use Shader Forge for our other shading purposes.

Thanks for making such a great Unity plugin, hopefully Ill pick it up soon there's a few other plugins we need though, so we need to play our budget right. Looking forward to when you can implement deferred rendering support.

Also congratulations on a great first day of sales it seems everybody loves Shader Forge, makes me want it even more, hahaha.

 

Just starting with SF :

 

Bought it today... great tool!

 

Awesome! Didn't know this existed until it showed up on the front page of the Asset Store. Subscribing to thread!

 

What do we need to feed into the Mip input from the cubemap node? I am trying to drive the Mip Level with a glossiness map, is this even possible? I tried to multiply the alpha(glossmap) by ten and round it in the assumption it takes integers but i am not sure how to do it and if that could even work...

Also, i ran into a problem, a color property node does not show up as a property for some reason...
I'll send you the shader with a dropboxlink as a PM, in case you want to take a look, as it might be a bug although i am not sure.

Edit: Restarting Unity helped, it didn't gave me any errors and also behaved unsuspicious... No clue what could have caused this. It was not possible to add any properties at all anymore, after restarting unity it went back to normal. So, nevermind.

 

Hi all, long time lurker on this thread, happy to see that this has finally made it to the Asset Store!!

I picked up Substance Designer on sale from steam recently, and have been having fun creating all types of materials. I'm using the Unity Free version, and have been able to figure out how to use the substances (via the built in shaders). This is really starting to stoke some creative fires.

From what I'm understanding, this tool will allow me to create shaders, in a similar fashion to the way Substance Designer works (node based). Will these shaders work in the same way as the built in shaders work now in Unity? Setting Diffuse/Normal/Spec maps etc? Basically I am trying to figure out if I will be able to leverage the SD investment to create even better looking substances?

One of the things I've tried to do with SD and failed to get the results I'm looking for is creating glowing grid lines that lay just above a surface, ideally I would like to have it light up the area withing the "glow" and also affect content as it passes over the grid lines (kind of like the Tron light-cycle grid)..

Anyhow, any feedback (from the crowd, or Ace ) is appreciated, and congratulations on the release, this is an exciting project!

Thanks!

Edit (Now an SF customer ) woot! I will figure out how to use it one way or another, bare minimum I can use the textures generated from SD.

 

Hello,

I purchased this plugin just today. I haven't had much chance to play with it yet. There are couple of questions that I would like to ask.

1. The shaders generated from the forge. Are they mobile friendly?
2. Can you post example of Unlit Diffuse with Color multiply? I have done basic diffuse with color but cannot figure out the unlit.

Any pointers will be appreciated.

 

Hey! I just bought it and I wanted to join the celebration [but of course I'm not going to down that bottle by myself, I hope a lot more join in ]

And I hope all this hard work pays off, congratulations and keep it up!

 

I think this is all you need:

 

The next update (releasing today) will work with 4.2. SF has 4.2 compatibility, but I think it set it to 4.3 because I uploaded it through 4.3

Thanks Krileon! It means a lot to hear such fine words!
I'm really glad you like it!

That seems like a rather serious issue! Open up a thread on the SF feedback page: http://shaderforge.userecho.com/
And we'll continue from there! I think it's you're either running an old Unity version, or had a weird window layout in Unity. Try resetting the layout and see if it works, otherwise, open the thread on UserEcho

Cool! I'll be migrating to a thread in the asset store section very soon, just so you know
(I'll of course post in here letting people know when it's up)

1. It depends on the shaders. If you're using lighting, usually no. SF emphasized on high-quality content, and thus most things are done on a per-pixel level. You do have some control over vert vs frag calcs, but generally you'll want to use unlit stuff, if you're doing mobile, which should work fine unless you make some super advanced shader with it
2. This was already answered by DSebJ above!

 

I wondering if it would be possible to create a unlit shader with SF that receives and cast shadows?

 

You *might* run into some issues with receiving shadows without having light attenuation come into play, as received shadows are baked into the attenuation. Casting should be no problem though

 

maybe try my workaround for this problem. actually i have discovered it with shader forge.

have also purchased now but no time to play with it yet. looking foward to it.

 

Ok I see.
Thanks for the clarification.

 

really good job man, this will help a lot of people!

my contribution:

 

This asset is awesome!

 

Nice one KirbyRawr!

Also:

SF is now out on the asset store, thus, let's migrate to the asset store section instead!

Click here to go to the new thread!
(If you subscribed to this thread, don't forget to subscribe to the new one!)

 

Click the link above for further discussions.