Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

Haven't made the plunge yet but about too, last question before i do, this just gens shaderlab shaders right nothing special? (can just generate one and hand edit it if i so wish?)

Are they human readable or compressed piles of junk to the human eye? Could you post a very simple sample shader here for the example (just 2-3 nodes, any of them, as well as the shader output?)

Thanks!

 

Yes it generates shaderlab surface shader cg code. It's not commented much, but you can edit as you wish. It's normal code.

 

Very cool, I like it.

 

I've tried to make it as readable as possible, but it's not always ideally constructed. Here's an example anyhow



http://pastebin.com/hqWp7Pp2

A little correction - it doesn't generate surface shader code, it generates CG code

 

Thanks for sharing it!

 

Another new node coming in 0.24

 

+1

 

I'm super tired, so I can't quite interpret this. What exactly am I seeing here?

 

It's a triplanar shader, where textures are mapped to the surface with world coordinates, blended by the normal direction per-axis
The "Channel Blend" nodes to the left of the pillar of textures are the new ones

 

Shader Forge Beta 0.24 now released:
• Added node: Channel Blend. This has a mask input, and outputs the sum of each mask component multiplied by the corresponding color input. Useful for triplanar blending
• Added node: Noise. This will generate a pseudorandom number based on a Vector2 input as a seed
• Specular Ambient Lighting now uses the fresnel term when PBL is on
• The physically based lighting mode is now more accurate. Increasing specularity will now decrease diffuse
• The 3D preview will now use the scene skybox as a background by default
• The 3D preview will now rotate the camera around the mesh, instead of rotating the mesh itself
• Comments on nodes will now be displayed in the shader code when a node is used multiple times
• You can now set the ScreenPos to SceneUVs, to use as Scene Color UVs, which is useful for chromatic aberration, and other effects
• The settings panel expanders now move smoothly and has cleaner code
• Checking the Normal map checkbox on Texture 2D nodes will now switch the default value to Bump
• Fixed a bug where only the first mesh you select for the 3D preview is applied
• Fixed a bug where sliders didn't save their default value in the shader
• Fixed a bug where Texture2D nodes marked as normal maps had an alpha output (This is due to how Unity decodes their normal maps)
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't use object position in vertex offset
• Fixed a bug where labels sometimes got the wrong horizontal alignment
• Fixed a bug where you could right-click on nodes through the side-panels
• Fixed a bug where the drag cursor in the settings panel appeared when hovering properties, when only a single property was present
• Fixed a bug where normals weren't normalized in some cases when using a normal map

Click to see all changelogs

(Don't forget to delete the old Shader Forge before updating to this one!)

 

Hello! I'm trying to create a flat surface shader in shader forge but I don't really know where to start. I have no experience creating custom lighting and I have searched all over and can't find any info on how to go about creating that effect. Does anyone know how to do this or where I can find a tutorial or some sort of instructions to get this working? Thanks!

 

If by "flat surface shader" you mean, the low-poly faceted look, then that's not done on a shader level, that's usually done in the model itself. Make sure each face has hard edges all over, to get that look

 

Here's how the new Channel Blend node works:

 

Ok Shader Forge is the most amazing thing scenes sliced bread! Unity team needs to hire you and make this part of Unity ASAP. These updates and new nodes are phenomenal.

 

Can you add an RGBA output from the texture2d so that rgb and alpha dont have to separately be appended?

 

I suppose, but I don't think it's worth it, given how rarely RGBA is used and the added interface clutter/added complexity for the majority who won't use it

 

Haha well now I feel stupid I always though it was done in the shader. That actually makes more sense.

Well I have another question. I'm trying to recreate this shader.
I can't seem to get it looking right and I bet its because I'm probably getting the light and reflection vectors wrong.
What is the shader forge equivalent of these nodes?

 

The only thing you need to change, is the vector 0,1,0, that is marked as NormalMap, to the Normal Direction node in SF. (I think)

 

Maybe you could add a checkbox to the Texture2D node that says "Append Alpha" or something similar? That'd probably be a decent compromise.

 

If I were to implement it, it would probably be RMB on the RGB output connector, to open a menu where you can pick if you want RGB or RGBA. Adding another checkbox would make the Texture2D node even taller, which I want to avoid, since it's already tall as it is

 

Yeah, I completely forgot it has the default colour drop down on top of the normal map checkbox for some reason.

 

Hey i have a question. i'm thinking of a cool method to make volumetric smoke similar to Unreal Engine 4. but in order to do it i need to do things like custom lighting with transparency and getting the view depth of pixels. i've been trying to make it and i have been running into problems. i tried to make a custom lighting model with it only paying attention to light falloff and shadows(giving that depth smoke effect) and i keep running into lighting issues. like it staying really dark and such. couldn't find a node that gave me the pixels position on the z buffer. which i want to fade the smoke when you get closer to it. also good for sun shafts. not sure if its possible but if it is i would love to share the shader when i'm done. thanks ahead of time. : )

 

You can check the distance between the view position and the world position of the pixel, using the two nodes with the same name, and the distance node

 

Awesome your a life saver thanks. also turns out the lighting problem i was having with the particles is related to the particles being tweaky with surface shaders.

 

Sorry for the late response, thanks for looking into this. Being able to manipulate the lightmap through shaderforge would be cool too!

Keep up the awesome work!

 

Someone at Polycount asked how to do gradient mapping with multiple gradients, so, thought I could post the node tree here as well

 

awesome!

 

I see that Shader Forge support IBL map from Kyshop.

But it is possibile modify Marmoset Skyshop default shader to add for example a dissolve node?

Thanks

 

You can make a SF shader that works like the Skyshop built-in shaders, and then add dissolve functionality to them if you like.
You can't modify their shader with SF though.

 

In the future with SF will be possile modify existing shader like Skyshop?

 

Are you going to support deferred lighting in the near future?

 

if marmoset would rewrite their shaders so they are readable for shaderforge, possible. But otherwise i don't see how this is supposed to work - that would mean reading any shader and rearranging it to a system that follows the ruleset of shaderforge - too much work to be honest.

 

I tried this in strumpy shader editor a while back, and was so terrified by the fps drop I havent tried in since.

I haven't even tried Shader Forge yet for this purpose but there is different ways to do it I believe? One way is direct into the refraction component of the master node, the other is using a render to texture, both using R and G values to offset the pixels. Has anyone made just a simple refration shader that works well on mobile?

If someone could point me in the right direction id be really happy and thankful,

eitherwise a great tool Shader Forge is and its awesome to meet fellow node shader artists

 

Yes, but I don't know when! The thing is, I've heard rumors that the deferred system in Unity will change soon, so I'm waiting for that, to avoid having to do twice the amount of work. Deferred is a huge topic, so, I wouldn't want to do it twice

 

Just purchased, definately fits my need, however small nitpick, you should reallllyyyy add a camera to the sample scene (even if just a static camera object that shows the whole scene from perspective), when i load an example project hit run i kinda expect to see something

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

Currently I'm creating a triplannar shader for voxel terrain and I'm using PBL, The problem is that the shader wants tangents and the voxel mesh generator doesn't output uvs nor tangents, is there a work around for that?

 

Disable lightmaps, or add tangents to the mesh. There are scripts for that on the net, Google should help

 

Actually i see in the sample the smoke is very diferent from the one in the first page of the thread, any chance you could share that sample? (the one included is some dx tess shader on a single object, not smoke running within a torus but more like dispersing on the surface, not quite the sample i'm looking for, i really like the 1st page effect!)

 

It's the same shader, there shouldn't be any difference, apart from the lighting in the scene

 

Looks like this for me when i run it :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g4l9fbq3aqbekih/ShaderForgeSmoke.PNG

 

Looks correct to me, apart from the lighting

 

Actually you're right, since the colors (smoke vs rest) are much more diferent in the original shot i didn't realise it was smoke sliding over the object (and not running Inside a semi-empty torus), my bad!

 

Any chance we could "flip" the node graph? i'd feel a lot more comfortable left to right than right to left when composing going from what i start with to the left flowing into the final result to the right?

 

Not at the moment no

 

Can you clarify what deferred mode not begin supported actually means?

Does it simply not work at all in deferred? Does it work, but with artefacts? Are only specific features incompatible with deferred while other features work fine?

 

http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/faq/?Q=deferred#deferred

 

Ah, thanks.

 

Hey is there any way of getting the Projection matrix from Projectors into Shader forge Shaders?

 

I did want it per particle to I can increase the random patterns in my smoke, which is created by a noise perturb and noise alpha, which can be animated. The unfortunate part is that all particles will move and look the same (although scaling helps). I guess I'll just have to modify the offset in a component script on the particle system.

Thanks for the ideas!

 

Acegikmo, Can I write to you, what a tutorial I need, and you could have told me how to do it

thnks