Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

@Acegikmo

D = distance from a given point (or points) on the mesh
A = amount (color value, from blue to cyan to green to yellow to orange to red)

I would like to be able to control the color of the mesh based on the distance (D) from one side (or both) an amount (A). So the mesh may only go from blue to green over the entire surface. Or it may go from blue to red a short distance from the start point.

Think soft select in Max when you are playing with the falloff and pinch values. Thank you.

 

You can't really check distances along the surface of the geometry on a shader level, but I'm not sure thats what you're trying to do.
"distance from a given point (or points) on the mesh" - Is it point or points? (It makes a lot of difference)

What is the end-result you want to achieve? (This all sounds like something that shouldn't be handled on a shader level)

 

@ Murgilod, WFTO_JWong, Acegikmo I was talking like a blood puddle, but creating animated properties is cool too, I guess I just wanted to know if I could use shader forge to create kind of effects. Nice effects by the way

 

Can you think of a way to achieve screen size dependant variable tesselation (i'd like to shoot for 1 pixel = no less than 1 triangle) or is that not possible (i know you can tesselate based on distance but i'm not sure if it's possible to figure out how many tris are in a given pixel in the tess stage)?

If not is it possible to do distance based tess without custom code using just nodes?

 

I think the closest you get to that is to use distance based tessellation, which is possible yeah
You can use the View Position, World Position and the Distance node to check the distance

 

Oh i hadn't noticed there was a distance node, that in itself answer my question quite a few other.

Really amazed at the quality, no clue why the hell you call this a beta version

 

Are you doing something funky in the preview with the view? I just did a little test (inputing to diffuse instead of tess factor) and it works just fine if i apply the shader to a game object move in scene view (color changes while moving toward / away from object) but the object color doesn't change within the shader forge preview (if i zoom in/out in preview)

 

The zoom doesn't move the camera back and forth, it changes the FoV

 

I see, so sounds like it's all normal then

 

Tool looks amazing, been looking for a good replacement shader editor after shifting from UDK to Unity and this looks like it could be what i wanted. Is there any demo/trial version of this available right now? I will most likely end up buying this tool, but a demo would be nice.

 

Oh and while i can understand that behavior, i think it would be nice to add a warning on the view node about this (on a bad day, i could've spent a lot of time before trying it outside the preview )

 

I really hope Unity gets some expanded OpenGL support in the future. I'd love to use this stuff but I deploy to/from Macs :/

 

Feature request : i'm working on a large graph (as it's going i'm thinking it will be way above 100 nodes), any chance you could give us some form of "colored panels" like world machine does in which we can put "group" nodes by functional area and when moving a panel all nodes move along?

I'm trying to keep my nodes grouped in areas but at 25 nodes it's already a mess and i'm barely starting my ubber offline shader

 

Is there a node that does the inverse of LERP?

I have value A and B, lerp(A,B,0.5) = X
Is there such a function such that func(A,B,X) = 0.5 ?

For distance based tesselation i'm trying to do min distance max distance and i need to know where "distance" is % Wise between min max to know which % of tess (lerped between min max tess factor params) i want to apply.

 

In the spirit of sharing here's a very tiny chunk of the shader i'm working on showing how to support both distance static tesselation. Hope this will help someone (as explained above, the tesselation won't show in the shader forge preview only in game / in editor)

 

Node grouping is a popular request, there will probably be more support for such functionality at some point

For inverse Lerp, you can use the Remap node. Hold R and click, and set the "to" values to 0 and 1, and the from values, as your A and B "Lerp" values.

 

Thanks!
There's no demo out yet, but the video tutorials should give you an idea of how it works
http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/tutorials/

 

For inverse lerp i ended up doing it by hand instead of a single node, but i'll switch to your solution as it sounds better for readability.

Another silly question, if using outline, how can i prevent it from being shown on the backface when also using culling? (or is that actually what the outline is? the backface of the object and thus never showing over it due to backface culling?)

 

"when also using culling?" - Which one?

The outline is a vertex normal extrusion with reversed face normals, and thus, frontface culling, but I'm not sure if it works correctly when using frontface culling on the main mesh

 

Sorry what i meant is when i'm using alpha (not culling, my bad) what see if i also use outline is the color of the outline (in transparent areas) instead of the background.

 

Oh, you can't control that at the moment (If I understood you correctly).

 

Not a problem, was more of toying with the idea but i'll drop the outline from my shader for now

 

Hi there!

I want to do a shader that overlays other when I select an object.

This "selection shader" have an emissive channel to make a glossy effect when selection.

Is there any option for the shader to take the maps of the objects that overlays and add the glossy effect to that when the selection is on? I can do it by the Shader Forge options?

Edit: I already have a script that changes the shader of the object by the time of the selection, but the shader does not remind the maps of the object.

Thanks a lot!

 

Usually you don't want to switch shaders; make two materials, and switch between those, and you'll have full control over which texture maps are on which material, and in what state

 

In my case, switch between materials its not efficient at all.

I have a lot of selectable objects on the scene, and they are in different texture atlas, so making the shader changes is more efficient for me.

I made a selection shader with the Strumpy and it reminds the maps of the objects and add the glossy effect (the selection shader have the same map slots, with the same name, so it takes the object map), but with Shader Forge I'm no capable of doing that..


Sorry If I can not explain well.. My native language is spanish!

 

It should work as long as your properties use the same name in both shaders

 

I'm having a pretty weird issue, i've got all i need working just fine including displacement however when testing i notice that, as soon as i add displacement, things that are getting displaced on the back of the object appear "in front" of the object (as if the front was partially transparent). Without displacement it looks just fine (fully opaque)

What you're seeing in the blue area are things getting displaced behind, on the other side of the sphere (when rotating i can 100% confirm there's no displacement issue, they're getting displaced behind not in front, no clue at all why they render over this, specially since they're backface culled untill displaced and behind both before after displacement)

Any ideas?

 

Actually here's a better example of the issue.

In screenshot 1 the blue area is fine (opaque)



I do nothing but zoom toward it in screenshot 2 (the whole of screenshot 2 is approx the same area is the blue area of screenshot 1) and look at the place in red, see through!



Nothing is connected to the alpha or alpha cutout inputs, and backface culling is on.

 

What's the desired effect, and how does your node tree look?

 

The desired effect is just regular perpendicular displacement (heightmap style) and it actually works just fine (if you ignore the issue of seeing through other triangles, the vertexes are all moved where they should be).

The tree is a bit big to post here as an example but the relevant part (the lerp is between 2 heightmaps) looks like this :

 

Also what seems to be blended behind is the same thing as what you can see while Inside the model (the extruded polys)

While it's perfectly normal that i can see those "Inside" the sphere i don't understand why i can see them outside the sphere (behind perfectly opaque polys)

 

Double check your blending mode - are you sure it's set to opaque?
Are you sure your heightmaps aren't (unintentionally) hit negative values?

 

Your lack of a demo forced me to buy it on the Asset Store and i am absolutely loving it so far, amazing work Acegikmo! I will definitely recommend this tool to other Unity developers.

 

Sorry that you felt forced!
I'm glad you're liking it so far anyhow

 

I don't think forced is a good way of describing it... let's just call it a compulsion The tool is too cool to pass up!

 

I don't see opaque but changing to off fixed it ty!

 

Well you can always get a demo on some other place we all know about...

 

Been toying with shader forge the most of today and i am pretty impressed by how easy it makes making advanced shaders, but i am still trying to wrap my head around Physically Based Lightning, is there some good documentation on how this works in Shader Forge or are there some general knowledge to be found around this?

Blinn-Phonn


PBL


Edit: Found some documentation on how to handle some aspects of PBL, my specular values were way off.

 

Is it possible to somehow have a shader recieve shadows while using the refraction node? I am trying to make a surface reflect using a RenderTexture and it seems to be working just fine, but i cannot seem to be able to recieve shadows while using Refraction. Is it possible to simulate the same effect in my diffuse node (I add the reflection to the base diffuse)?

Without refraction


With refraction

 

Are you in forward or deferred rendering? It seems like it should work, assuming you're forward rendered.

 

Is there a way to shatter an object into polygons in shader forge without DX11 or is that something I should script/make special models for?

 

You can use vertex offset for that as well, as long as you have hard edges (split normals) in the model
But it really depends on how you want it to shatter - you won't get any collision data to respond with a GPU animation like this

 

I was in deferred, but doesn't appear to recieve any shadows in Forward rendering either.

 

Hi, I want to make toon shading with Shader Forge and make this simple shader.
http://i.imgur.com/awXWsLR.png

This probably worked correct like this.
http://i.imgur.com/zC4sxrZ.png
But, when check the "Cast Shadows" and "Receive Shadows" to set shadow mapping..
http://i.imgur.com/JlPgqPh.png
The received shadow is black (Shading color is brown). And the received shadow overlap the shading shadow.

I want this received shadow to be brown and blend the shading shadow.
Could you please tell me?

 

@ok8596:
Multiplying your shaded object by the light attenuation node is the cause of your "problem".
What you want to do is map the light attenuation to a shadow color. Either do this by employing a lerp or you can do something similar like you did with the dot product (using an append node on the light attenuation to create UV coordinates to do the lookup inside your shading LUT).
What you do with the shadow color is up to you - you could simply multiply it by your dot and diffuse color. Or you can lerp between shadow color and diffuse. Quite sime possibilities... it all depends on the look you want.

 

Do you still plan to release Spherical Area Lights with Shader Forge? Cheers

 

Iøm trying to figure out how i make a reflection have some falloff depending on it depth from the surface(blurs out), but i can't seem to figure out how. I am guessing that i should have some kind of gradient as the falloff paired with the Z depth for the length, but how?

Basically this should fade out depending on the objects location from the ground:

 

Maybe, not sure! But I do want to make a tutorial for it at some point. Right now things may change quite a bit around the corner, so, I'm holding off on planning more things at the moment.

Making it blur is tricky, but you should be able to fade it using the fresnel node multiplied by the reflection, which will approximate the effect you're going for.

 

It does appear to be working, but the effect is not consistent depending on the angle the camera is facing the surface (is almost invisible in the surface when viewed from above, completely visible when viewed from the side).

 

You can use the remap node if you want values other than 0 to 1, which may be useful if you still want to keep reflecting even at a perpendicular angle