Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

Yes. Tessellation works, I just don't know the best way to connect the nodes to use my normal map as a height map to give it some extra detail...

 

You can't directly use a normal map as a height map. Normal maps contain normalized surface vectors in tangent space, not a height offset, in any of the channels, without deriving it somehow.
Usually, where you got the normal map from, you can export heightmaps as well, usually into the alpha channel.
For displacement, multiply a normal vector with the heightmap, and plug the normal map into the normal input of the main node, and it should work.

 

Hi Ace and everyone!
Is it possible to access Unitys texgenmode in SF?

I want to project cloud shadows.

 

Hi all! I've seen several people ask this, but no answers yet: has anyone done decals/projectors with SF?

 

I have a question. It's probably an error due to how little I know about shader programming, but I'm trying to move the verts closer to both sides of the screen down in Y using this Vertex Offset channel on the main node but I can't get it to work. I'm basically trying to move verts downward the closer they are to the screen. For example:

If a vert is at the very edge of the screen, it is offset -1 in Y, while if it's at about 25% away from the edge of the screen, it's only moved down 0.5 in Y. Does this make sense? Is this possible to achieve with Shader Forge?

 

Really liking Shader Forge, but I'm kind of a noob
Is there any way to make a shader only do refraction on pixels that are located behind the object/below the plane with the shader? This knowledge would be really usefull when creating water shaders

 

Please, how can I make the reflection to distort with the normalmap??
I am creating a shader and a C# script based on the unity water script.

This way it doesnt distort.

Thanks

 

Hi

he may have had the answer in the forum, but I have not seen. I have two chanel uv in my mesh, and let me know how to forge shader I can apply a texture on a chanel and another texture on the other. This is to make a lightmap.

Sorry for m y English

 

I've never used the TexGen modes, so I'm not entirely sure what they are even. However, it says it doesn't work when using a custom vertex program, so I presume it has something to do with generating texture coordinates. You should be able to generate them manually though, using the nodes SF provides at the moment.

Not sure what you mean by "the verts closer to both sides of the screen".
But if you want to move verts down as they near the camera by depth, here's one way of doing it:
Vector3(0, -1, 0) * ( 1 / Distance( viewPos, worldPos) )

If you want to offset it in screen space, based on some edges of the screen, you can use the screen position node.

Not sure if it's possible at the moment. The grab pass grabs all pixels, including the ones in front of the object itself

You won't be able to get a 100% accurate reflection, but you may be able to make it a bit more plausible if you mask out RG from the normal map, multiply it by some low value such as 0.05 (this would be the refraction intensity), and add it to the scene UVs node before plugging it in

It depends on how you want to apply it. I suggest reading up on UV coordinates and texture blending on the Wiki: http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Shader_Forge_Wiki

 

i found
thanks XD

 

Is there a way to remove the orange light from the preview window (or change it's color)?

Thanks!

 

Not at the moment no

 

I often flip my lighting settings to single directional light while I work on a shader to get rid of that light, just remember to put it back when your done..

 

So... Before Acegikmo beats me (too many PM XD), can some one help me invert the distance between the view pos and the world pos. for a tesselation ocean ?

I need to get more tesselated in the close view and less tesselated in far view...

Ace told me to do this:

Just reverse it and clamp it, or inverse it and scale it.

Clamp01(52-distance)

But as I'm too dumb for writing shaders, I couldn't get it XD

Can someone help me ? =(

 

Inverting is usually done with normalized coordinates (0 to 1), so you'd do 1 - coordinate.

 

Hi
I am a noob in shader
I wish to control the strength of the specular with a specular map in black and white. I have not found out how I could do that

Thanks to help

 

Hi, please teach me.
I maid toon shader like this setting.


Then, I set double sided faces to this shader. But it was a little wrong shading like this.


I must use double sided with shader.
What should I do to make true shading with double sided?

 

Just connect a texture node to the specular input of the main node

There's no way of solving that at the moment.

However, you can make the mesh itself double-sided, instead of the shader

 

Oh, no way...
I see. Thank you for your fast repling

 

Thanks that was logique :s

 

Hey all,

Im trying to wrap my head around vertex offset for a foliage shader, is there anyway for the offset to be in world space not object space? for example to have grass all blowing in the same direction?

cheers

 

Yeah, you can use the transform node to transform a direction from local space to world space. You can convert some of the properties to global variables, such as the Vector4 property, and then set it using this:
Shader.SetGlobalVector(string propertyName, Vector4 vec)

Hope it helps!

 

Hi Acegikmo,

There are many people wondering why ShaderForge does not work with PSM for PSVita and i decided to give it a try. Debugging with Psvita I found a error concerning the UV coordinates. Every time I put 2d texture sample the shader goes black. Finally i have found a way to get console errors to debug and that was the result:

This error is repeated about 20 times before initializing. And finally:

This is the shader:



Without multiplying the Diffuse texture the shader works perfectly.

Could i ask some possible solution to fix this?

 

Alright, perhaps you can help me out debugging this. Looks like the vita may be more picky with variable names.

Open the shader source and you'll find a part where it says struct VertexInput { in your shader. Inside that one, change:

float2 uv0 : TEXCOORD0;

to:

float2 texcoord0 : TEXCOORD0;

And in all the functions called VertexOutput vert(VertexInput v), search for:

o.uv0 = v.uv0;

and change it to:

o.uv0 = v.texcoord0;

And see if it compiles / what errors you get

 

I could use a little help. Hopefully a simple question.

I am using a vertex offset to create waves on a water plane. I have all black verts and then several verts that are blue. I am tiling the plane that that is being deformed (separate objects). Is there a way to clamp the edges of the planes so they are not shifting up and down as well? They are painted black, so I am not sure what I should do in the shader to lock them down.

I tried changing them to all red and then putting a 0x0 clamp on the red channel but that didn't seem to work.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Yes! That was the solution, now the shader works! There is some way to modify SF to do this automatically? if i do complex shaders, doing this will give me much problems.

Also, thank you very much for your help, but if you can solve it you could put that SF has official support for PSVITA!

 

This is now fixed in Beta 0.34

 

Thank you very much! Now i'm testing much more complex shaders with custom lightning ( fresnel, toon ramps, cubemaps for IBL, outline and outline color, specularity ) and all are working and compiling correctly. And performance is very good. Maybe parallax is supported in Vita thanks to SF!

Beta 0.34! all PSM developers will enjoy SF!

 

Hey Ace,

any idea why using AlphaClip might cause shadows to render over the shadow caster itself although they should be occluded by the caster from the current point of view?
I have an image attached for you to see the issue.



I have to admit though that the shader has been modified at code level to skip some unnecessary calculations when doing the actual clip() call ... but I made sure to repeat these steps inside both the shadowcollector and the shadowcaster passes.

Sadly I cannot show the shader code publicly. So let me know if I can send you the code via pm.

 

Looks like you have deferred lighting on your game/camera without having enabled deferred passes in the shader

 

Thx, that fixed it.

Edit: Have to speak with our programmers... switching to deferred secretly... tzz tzz tzz...

 

How does SF differ in its use of alpha compared to a unity diffuse shader (and Lux shaders)? When using a Unity diffuse shader, the alpha will control the reflection intensity of the screen space reflections. But when you try to do this with a SF shader, even with a basic shader, the alpha has no control.

Possibly needs to be tweaked?



thanks!

 

Is there a way to create a self shadowing shader?

 

That's because you haven't plugged the alpha channel of the Color node into anything. It's not used. Plug it into specular to control the specular intensity with it

Not that I know of

 

I quickly tried that out, but that isn't the solution. CandelaSSR is using the alpha in the diffuse slot for the screen space reflection intensity since it's a variable that doesn't affect anything else in the shader. The basic Unity diffuse shader has this working correctly when you adjust the alpha slider within the color picker window.

For some reason this same method doesn't work in SF. Since now that you mention that the alpha wasn't plugged into anything, still no dice when I append the alpha to the rgb when plugging it into the diffuse slot.

thanks

 

Looking into Shader Forge for my next project, seems pretty awesome! I'm an artist, so a lot of this goes over my head, but the node based systems are familiar, being similar to Maya's interface.
I'm trying to figure out if I can make a toon shader that displays another texture in the black part of the shadow area, like this:
From this to this

 

Like this ?

 

Hi Ace,

So LIVENDA got back to me about using Shader Forge with their CandelaSSR asset, here's what they said:

Is it possible to update SF to be compliant with this by default?

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/20...Unity/page22?p=1629934&viewfull=1#post1629934

cheers

 

Shader Forge Beta 0.34 is now released!
• All nodes can now be created with hotkeys using a new quick-select menu!
- Holding a letter on the keyboard will display a menu of all nodes starting with that letter
- Scrolling the mouse wheel will move you through the list
- Clicking will create the highlighted node
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't use some vectors in the alpha clip input
• Fixed an issue where deferred pre-pass shaders didn't handle gloss values of zero properly
• Fixed a bug where you couldn't use the light direction node in the outline color input
• Fixed a bug where fog didn't work on deferred pre-pass shaders
• Fixed a bug where shaders using UV coordinates didn't compile on the PS Vita
• Potentially fixed a bug where your locale would make shaders write commas as decimal separators rather than periods

Possibly, but you don't always have a Color node named _Color in your shader, and you don't always use it in that way, so there's no way for SF to know when you want to use it or not. However, if it's just about plugging in an alpha, you should be able to simply uncheck auto-sorting in the blend settings, and then plug the alpha channel of the color into the Alpha input of the main node

 

Hey Ace,

As always - a great update to SF
I'm digging the quick-select menu!

re: the alpha issue - auto-sorting is disabled in Deferred render path. So I also haven't had access to Alpha slot. Even when I switch to Forward and play with the Alpha slot and the sorting, it's causing all kinds of strange things with the opacity of the objects with the shader.

If I try and re-create a Unity diffuse shader: multiply a color texture 2d into the Diffuse, the alpha slider has no affect compared to when I use the Unity diffuse shader. In that case the alpha controls the reflection intensity of CandelaSSR

 

Kinda, the two different textures between lit and unlit is correct, but I also want a hard edged shadow like a toon shader makes. Your example really clarified what the light direction and normal directions nodes for me though, thanks for showing me!

 

Hi Grumpy,

If u want a hard edge shadow you can use the posterize node. But if you want more control, you can use a ramp texture ( way better results ). Plug the "Dot product" node to an "append" node, plug a value of 0 in the same append node, plug the append node to the UV chanel of the ramp texture and finally plug the ramp texture to the lerp mask.

 

@Acegikmo:
I really like the new quick/scroll select view... awesome job.
Also thx for fixing quite some useful stuff (like the external/geometry vectors for alpha clipping).

 

Why can't I activate Lightmap, lightprobe, and so on when in Unlit/Custom??

 

Because lightmaps and light probes all depend on what you have plugged into Diffuse/spec/gloss, which aren't available when doing custom lighting.

I would like to change how custom lighting works in the future, but I have to do some restructuring of the internal code first. Here's my plan:

1. Make a node for light probes
2. Make a node for lightmap data
3. Remove custom lighting as a lighting *mode*, and make the custom lighting input always be available. Custom lighting will then be added on top of the auto-lighting.

 

Loving Shader Forge, it's the bees knees

Any help with the following problem would be appreciated. I'm trying to achieve an effect like this. A shader that blends between 2 textures (grey texture to pink texture), but the blending needs to happen based on both the orientation of the object (think snow cover, top to bottom), and the normal map.

Any tips or links to any similar directions?

 

Mask out the G channel from the normal vector. Be sure to check the perturbed checkbox so that it reads from the normal map's perturbed vector

 

I cant use the new quick-select menu because I dont have scroll
I use wacom tablet

 

Yeah it's hard to use without a scroll. In any case, you can still use the old RMB menu and the right side panel

 

still puttering around with trying to get the alpha to function correctly work with the Candela asset.
here's my attempt at mimicking the basic Unity diffuse shader with SF

Code (csharp):

1. // Shader created with Shader Forge Beta 0.34
2. // Shader Forge (c) Joachim Holmer - http://www.acegikmo.com/shaderforge/
3. // Note: Manually altering this data may prevent you from opening it in Shader Forge
4. /*SF_DATA;ver:0.34;sub:START;pass:START;ps:flbk:,lico:1,lgpr:1,nrmq:1,limd:1,uamb:True,mssp:True,lmpd:False,lprd:False,enco:False,frtr:True,vitr:True,dbil:False,rmgx:True,rpth:0,hqsc:True,hqlp:False,blpr:1,bsrc:3,bdst:7,culm:0,dpts:2,wrdp:False,ufog:False,aust:True,igpj:True,qofs:0,qpre:3,rntp:2,fgom:False,fgoc:False,fgod:False,fgor:False,fgmd:0,fgcr:0.5,fgcg:0.5,fgcb:0.5,fgca:1,fgde:0.01,fgrn:0,fgrf:300,ofsf:0,ofsu:0,f2p0:False;n:type:ShaderForge.SFN_Final,id:1,x:32761,y:32645|diff-44-OUT,alpha-46-A;n:type:ShaderForge.SFN_Tex2d,id:6,x:33448,y:32633,ptlb:MainTex,ptin:_MainTex,tex:b8c7bde184980a044b9e802624c50911,ntxv:2,isnm:False;n:type:ShaderForge.SFN_Multiply,id:44,x:33127,y:32547|A-46-RGB,B-6-RGB;n:type:ShaderForge.SFN_Color,id:46,x:33448,y:32467,ptlb:Color,ptin:_Color,glob:False,c1:1,c2:1,c3:1,c4:1;proporder:6-46;pass:END;sub:END;*/
5.  
6. Shader "Shader Forge/unlit_test_sf" {
7.     Properties {
8.         _MainTex ("MainTex", 2D) = "black" {}
9.         _Color ("Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
10.         [HideInInspector]_Cutoff ("Alpha cutoff", Range(0,1)) = 0.5
11.     }
12.     SubShader {
13.         Tags {
14.             "IgnoreProjector"="True"
15.             "Queue"="Transparent"
16.             "RenderType"="Transparent"
17.         }
18.         Pass {
19.             Name "ForwardBase"
20.             Tags {
21.                 "LightMode"="ForwardBase"
22.             }
23.             Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
24.             ZWrite Off
25.            
26.             Fog {Mode Off}
27.             CGPROGRAM
28.             #pragma vertex vert
29.             #pragma fragment frag
30.             #define UNITY_PASS_FORWARDBASE
31.             #include "UnityCG.cginc"
32.             #pragma multi_compile_fwdbase
33.             #pragma exclude_renderers xbox360 ps3 flash d3d11_9x
34.             #pragma target 3.0
35.             uniform float4 _LightColor0;
36.             uniform sampler2D _MainTex; uniform float4 _MainTex_ST;
37.             uniform float4 _Color;
38.             struct VertexInput {
39.                 float4 vertex : POSITION;
40.                 float3 normal : NORMAL;
41.                 float2 texcoord0 : TEXCOORD0;
42.             };
43.             struct VertexOutput {
44.                 float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
45.                 float2 uv0 : TEXCOORD0;
46.                 float4 posWorld : TEXCOORD1;
47.                 float3 normalDir : TEXCOORD2;
48.             };
49.             VertexOutput vert (VertexInput v) {
50.                 VertexOutput o;
51.                 o.uv0 = v.texcoord0;
52.                 o.normalDir = mul(float4(v.normal,0), _World2Object).xyz;
53.                 o.posWorld = mul(_Object2World, v.vertex);
54.                 o.pos = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
55.                 return o;
56.             }
57.             fixed4 frag(VertexOutput i) : COLOR {
58.                 i.normalDir = normalize(i.normalDir);
59. /////// Normals:
60.                 float3 normalDirection =  i.normalDir;
61.                 float3 lightDirection = normalize(_WorldSpaceLightPos0.xyz);
62. ////// Lighting:
63.                 float attenuation = 1;
64.                 float3 attenColor = attenuation * _LightColor0.xyz;
65. /////// Diffuse:
66.                 float NdotL = dot( normalDirection, lightDirection );
67.                 float3 diffuse = max( 0.0, NdotL) * attenColor + UNITY_LIGHTMODEL_AMBIENT.rgb;
68.                 float3 finalColor = 0;
69.                 float3 diffuseLight = diffuse;
70.                 float2 node_70 = i.uv0;
71.                 finalColor += diffuseLight * (_Color.rgb*tex2D(_MainTex,TRANSFORM_TEX(node_70.rg, _MainTex)).rgb);
72. /// Final Color:
73.                 return fixed4(finalColor,_Color.a);
74.             }
75.             ENDCG
76.         }
77.         Pass {
78.             Name "ForwardAdd"
79.             Tags {
80.                 "LightMode"="ForwardAdd"
81.             }
82.             Blend One One
83.             ZWrite Off
84.            
85.             Fog { Color (0,0,0,0) }
86.             CGPROGRAM
87.             #pragma vertex vert
88.             #pragma fragment frag
89.             #define UNITY_PASS_FORWARDADD
90.             #include "UnityCG.cginc"
91.             #include "AutoLight.cginc"
92.             #pragma multi_compile_fwdadd
93.             #pragma exclude_renderers xbox360 ps3 flash d3d11_9x
94.             #pragma target 3.0
95.             uniform float4 _LightColor0;
96.             uniform sampler2D _MainTex; uniform float4 _MainTex_ST;
97.             uniform float4 _Color;
98.             struct VertexInput {
99.                 float4 vertex : POSITION;
100.                 float3 normal : NORMAL;
101.                 float2 texcoord0 : TEXCOORD0;
102.             };
103.             struct VertexOutput {
104.                 float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
105.                 float2 uv0 : TEXCOORD0;
106.                 float4 posWorld : TEXCOORD1;
107.                 float3 normalDir : TEXCOORD2;
108.                 LIGHTING_COORDS(3,4)
109.             };
110.             VertexOutput vert (VertexInput v) {
111.                 VertexOutput o;
112.                 o.uv0 = v.texcoord0;
113.                 o.normalDir = mul(float4(v.normal,0), _World2Object).xyz;
114.                 o.posWorld = mul(_Object2World, v.vertex);
115.                 o.pos = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
116.                 TRANSFER_VERTEX_TO_FRAGMENT(o)
117.                 return o;
118.             }
119.             fixed4 frag(VertexOutput i) : COLOR {
120.                 i.normalDir = normalize(i.normalDir);
121. /////// Normals:
122.                 float3 normalDirection =  i.normalDir;
123.                 float3 lightDirection = normalize(lerp(_WorldSpaceLightPos0.xyz, _WorldSpaceLightPos0.xyz - i.posWorld.xyz,_WorldSpaceLightPos0.w));
124. ////// Lighting:
125.                 float attenuation = LIGHT_ATTENUATION(i);
126.                 float3 attenColor = attenuation * _LightColor0.xyz;
127. /////// Diffuse:
128.                 float NdotL = dot( normalDirection, lightDirection );
129.                 float3 diffuse = max( 0.0, NdotL) * attenColor;
130.                 float3 finalColor = 0;
131.                 float3 diffuseLight = diffuse;
132.                 float2 node_71 = i.uv0;
133.                 finalColor += diffuseLight * (_Color.rgb*tex2D(_MainTex,TRANSFORM_TEX(node_71.rg, _MainTex)).rgb);
134. /// Final Color:
135.                 return fixed4(finalColor * _Color.a,0);
136.             }
137.             ENDCG
138.         }
139.     }
140.     FallBack "Diffuse"
141.     CustomEditor "ShaderForgeMaterialInspector"
142. }
143.  

Is there anyway to implement use of the alpha from the Color node (alpha slider)?


I can only use the alpha slider if I pipe the A channel into the Alpha of the shader - but then it starts to control the overall opacity of the material (which I don't want). Would it make sense to disable the Blending blend mode? Somehow include the alpha for internal control, but maintain an opaque shader...