Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

How to make the transition of colors based on gradient maps? Like this

https://stevencraeynest.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/easy-volumetric-explosion-in-unity3d/

 

@Vladnes He has the shader code at the end. you can break it down into parts and assemble it from there or take what you need after finding out about it.

 

Relevant bits at around 1:00, but I recommend watching the whole thing!

It's quite complicated, and partially impossible, as there's no custom lighting access to light probes, lightmapping and reflection probes yet

 

can someone please point me in the right direction to achieve correct refraction?

 

There's no easy way to do that in SF I'm afraid

 

ah ok,thanks for your answer, i thought it was possibble somehow based on the water meshs' normals

 

anyone know how use the new node rgb to hsv for change hue please

 

Yeah, I was just doing this the other day-- you use the RGB to HSV to break out the color into hue, saturation, value... take the hue output and run it through whatever process you want... then take that processed hue, and the unprocessed sat and val and run them back into an HSV to RGB node to get your process color.

[EDIT] Hue is handled as an angle. As a scalar, 0 - 1 would be the spectrum from red to violet and wrapping back to red... just like a color wheel. If you were to increment hue, you'd see the hue walk through the spectrum, eventually returning to the same color. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV for visualization of how this colorspace works.

 

thank's it's what's i try i will restart

 

Any way i can use a UV Channel as parameters?

ex: Fake btw. just to illustrate


or



Thanks

ps: Maybe... Normal Dir., Tanget Dir.?

 

I want to use distance to fade something, so that if it is greater than 20 distance, the value begins to fade towards "0"((Black)) over a distance of X meters... for the sake of this example, lets say 5.

How would I go about doing this?

How would I go about doing this with a Hermite easing curve, as well?

Currently, I've got it built as Depth -> Add -20 -> Emission(Opacity, or other uses) which only hides anything part of a given model that just tips over into that 1 space.

I'm also curious if I can have the whole model evenly affected, rather than the measurements being on a per-pixel base. I'm guessing I'd have to do a floor or ceiling on the depth?

I know that's about 5 questions. Sorry folks

 

Depth/distance fading is actually pretty easy.

One way to do it is to use a distance node, connected to the camera position (obviously), and either world position (gives you per-pixel results) or object position (gives you per-object results).

The output from the distance node is then a number, in meters. So anything right next to the camera will be black, more than 1m away will be white, with a linear gradient in between.

That's OK for now. What you then want to do is grab that distance number and plug it into a remap node. Not sure if you're familiar with remapping, but it's also easy. You want it to fade from white to black between the distances of (20) and (5). So you remap (distance) from (20) to (25) into (1) to (0). Also, don't forget to clamp this, otherwise you'd have values out of the 0-1 range.

Once you've got that, you can then do your fancy hermite curve, or as a U/V lookup for a ramp texture so you can draw your own gradients.

 

What am I doing wrong here with HSV? I've created a new shader (SF Default Lit PBR) and added a HSV to the Base Color input. The editor preview shows the colour changing when changing the hue, but it doesn't work in the scene or game views:

Gif here: http://i.imgur.com/DJWxfzS.gif http://i.imgur.com/RdvTTvM.gif

Shader graph:

 

It works as expected for me - couldn't get anything like what you're seeing.
Latest fix may be relevant: http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/changelog/

 

Yep, that has been fixed. It's only an issue on OpenGL / OSX as far as I can tell. It's fixed in the coming update

 

I am having a bit of trouble adding refraction to a transparent barrier shader I am working on, I am trying to add an alpha clip later to simulate the barrier being turned off, but for now I would just like to get the refraction working.

I can't connect the component mask to the refraction node connector for some reason.

 

Refraction is a two-component value, not a single value. Remove the component mask and instead append normal.r with normal.g, and hook it up to multiply, and then input that into refraction. You may also want to multiply by a slider/float too to control its intensity

 

I did this, and now my shader is not transparent at all, it seems to be ignoring the opacity.

 

Make sure you don't have any errors in the SF console. For instance, it needs to be alpha blended to make this work

 

I don't get any errors, just no transparency.

 

Then make sure you're passing it sensible data. As you can see, you're using the alpha channel of the texture. Is the alpha channel correctly set up?

 

@Acegikmo: Alas, over a week of testing, and I still haven't found any solutions. I was hoping you could set me on the correct path?

1. Is there a way of obtaining the physical size or extents of a model's bounds, mesh, or even collider?
2. Adding a "Code" node causes ShaderForge's main window to go blank and Unity to freeze. I'm using Unity v5.2.0f2. Is this a known issue?

Thank you so much in advance, and please be well!
- S.

 

1. Not automatically, but you can pass it in using a C# script with SetVector, and a Vector4 property in SF.
2. This is a known issue, and will be fixed for the next update

 

Instead of incurring an additional draw call because the Material Param is different,
would it be plausible to use a Global Param then?

Ex: Material Param for "_brightness"

...instead use...
ex: Global Param for "_brightness"


And from code call
Shader.SetGlobalFloat
before the material shader is rendered... from maybe:
MonoBehaviour.OnWillRenderObject() ?
MonoBehaviour.OnRenderObject() ?
....

Not sure. Just spitballing.

 

Thank you for your prompt response!

In regards to #1, is that a limitation of shaders themselves, or simply ShaderForge? I am seeking to create a fixed-width border around the normals of every object in my game, so if it could be done entirely within a shader, it is likely worth the research on my part to determine how to do so.

Glad to hear #2 will be resolved!

Thank you again.
- S.

 

Doesn't refraction not care about alpha? ie anywhere there is refraction on the RG it outputs refraction on the shader, regardless if those pixels diffuse should be alpha-clipped? I remember something like this happening when I was making a refraction shader a while ago. I think the solution I found was instead of plugging in the Append directly into the refraction add a Lerp node between them - then lerp between the append, and a Vector3(0,0,1), with LerpT being your alpha texture. (which will change the refraction normals of any areas that are supposed to be clipped to the default "no" distortion value)

Try that out. If that doesn't work ignore my nonsense

 

@Labyrith Studios
@Acegikmo

I have the same problems
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/sh...sed-shader-editor.222049/page-83#post-2223115
I using correctly Main texture with alpha channel and particles alpha is set to 0.
What i do wrong?

 

@Labyrith Studios @Morfeuskiev Read the last post I made on the last page. It explains what's going on. Here's a screenshot of the shader graph and a gif of it in action as well, in case that my explanation didn't make much sense

Refraction doesn't seem to care about whether a pixel has alpha by default, you have to handle opaque and transparent areas refracting differently yourself if that's the effect you're after by adjusting the normals/refraction input accordingly. Setting the alpha to 0 doesn't affect the refraction automagically.

Shader graph: http://i.imgur.com/vAY9h9j.png
Gif: http://i.imgur.com/OPF6DZl.gif

 

It's a limitation in Unity I'm afraid

 

Thanks so much, I got the first part working, but not the second. Could you show a tree example of how someone would do a gradient ramp lookup? The shaderforge wiki didn't really make sense to me on this one.

 

I made a shader that paints the particles in the color World position gradient. But when I change the camera orientation gradient moves.

How to fix the gradient on the particles? Maybe need to use the technique described here http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=2321541&postcount=975, but how?

 

Hi just started using Shader Forge - fantastic product!.

What is the values of the time node : second, millliseconds or tick ?
Can we reset to start at 0 so that we now how long time have gone ?

 

Hi Acegikmo,

I'm currently looking into porting my planet shaders (http://superearth.de or Asset Store) over to shader forge. Started out with the most complex one and I like the first results. Yet, I'm missing the pragma directive "noambient". How would I set this in SF? There is a "Receive Ambient Light" in the Lighting settings, but this always grey-out. Light Mode is unlit/custom. Hope this is an easy one. Thanks in advance

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the matrix solution is the best way. Could be wrong though. I really like that smooth gradient compared to using vertex coloring.

Time is in seconds. You can't restart the time without using your own property that is then set by script. But you can use the Frac node to repeat a 0-1 sequence. In that case, if you wanted to have something happen over the course of 3 seconds, you'd divide the time by 3 before passing that to the Frac node. So if a repeating time doesn't fit your needs, use a property.

I know your question wasn't directed at me, but I just checked and confirmed that ambient light isn't in the compiled shader under any of the major platforms when using Unlit/Custom... I'm probably misunderstanding what you're wanting though.

 

Hi IFL,

thank you for responding.

I'm looking for way to set the pragma directive #pragma noambient inside shader forge. In my original surface shaders I use for example this #pragma surface surf Ramp vertex:vert noambient alpha:blend to avoid Unity adding an ambient tint on objects dark side. Unity tints ambient per default. Means to get a really black dark side for my planets I need to switch of this ambient tinting. The question is how if #pragma noambient is not available.

 

I'm working on a shader to make my trees sway in the breeze. I'm almost there, but I'd like to be able to rotate each instance of the tree model and have the wind direction remain consistent (not adhere to local rotation). Is there an easy way to accomplish this? Right now I'm using a vector4 for my wind direction.

Also, the motion I see in the editor viewport is much more exaggerated than what I get when I run the game. Any idea why? Thanks!

 

That's not my experience with SF Unlit/Custom. I've looked at the compiled source and it's just not there. I also grabbed a screenshot and checked it in an image editor. Since I'm obviously of no help, I'll quit yapping and just assume that we have very different settings.

 

IFL is right. That pragma tells the compiler not to include ambient lighting calculations when the surface shader code actually gets compiled into a vertex/fragment shader.
Have you actually tried the custom lighting/unlit route?
SF is creating vertex/fragment shaders directly - not surface shaders. That pragma directive wouldn't be of much help either because of this.

 

Try the transform node. The wind can be seen to be acting as a vector 4, with XYZ acting as a direction and A acting as strength. But ignore strength for now. These coordinates will be in world-space; the wind is coming from the east and slightly uphill (or whatever).

Try using the transform node to change the world-direction wind to something else, (local, object, etc) and get an idea of what to use where and when. Then plug this output into a multiplier (by the vertex Alpha from the look of it).

Going back to wind strength a bit, you had the right idea with adding some randomness.

 

Thank you Jesus! The transform node was exactly what I needed.

 

Thanks Marco, Thanks IFL,
yeah I'm using lightmode custom/unlit, I mentioned that in my initial question. So if understand you both correctly ambient lighting is not added by default, at the moment I'm not aware what would cause this on my node network, well, I will check into SF node network again. For illustrating what I mean I added a screenshot. The planet on top is made with SF and shows the ambient dark side. The planet below is my original surface shader with black darkside.

 

Sorry, I just read your reply.
So you are on unlit and still get a lit backside - strange indeed.
Some things I'd check:
1) what does the code generated by sf look like - any suspicious unity constants and includes in there?
2) light probes - are there any? is the shader taking them into account?
3) reflection probes - again, are there any? are they affecting the shading? *
4) scene lighting - any baked lighting information affecting the shading? *

* (should not be the case in unlit, but who knows)

 

@Acegikmo,

Does Shader Forge support Phong Tessellation or PN Triangles? I'm looking for a way to smooth and round out a mesh. If not, is that I feature you'll implement at a later date? Thanks.

 

I checked your tips but the (my) error was in one of the nodes. I calculated dot product NdotL only positive not standard. So it's my bad. Marco and IFL, thank you both for your time. Sometimes I just need another pair of eyes to figure out how to set the ball rolling again. Without you I would still think that it's some #pragma thing. Thanks again.

 

Hello,

I am quite new to shaderforge and still haven't figured out everything. But I try my best.

I've built a (IMO) very simple shader with reflective transparency, which works fine in Editor view. On the other hand, in Game view the material is not visible at all. I found out it has something to do with "Shader Settings" -> "Target renderer". When unchecking "Direct3D 11" the material becomes visible in GameView, but missing the effects I was trying to achieve.

This isn't the only shader I made that is struggling with this issue. What am I doing wrong? And how can I fix it?
Is there a way to have this material visible in Gameview whil having "Direct 3D11" checked?

 

I'm wondering, how would I go about doing a gradient shader that lets me darken a model's feet, and as it goes up the body, less is darkened.

Trouble is, I am working on a model that is modular, it has separate objects set to attachment points, and it's definitely not water tight. It's especially troublesome because the UV islands are rotated various ways to get the best packing.

If there is a solution that requires a baked out gradient map, that's okay, but ideal would be without requiring map data from the modelers.

-

An aside; is there any sort of shader forge hub like on reddit or otherwise? Seems like this poor thread is containing the whole shader forge unity community!

 

I'm using a custom/unlit shader to make a cel shader and was wondering if there was a way control the threshold angle used in my main lighting calculation (based on phong-blinn model).

What I mean is, I'm getting the diffuse by doing the Dot product (positive) of Light Dir. and Normal Dir. My understanding is if they point in the same direction, it outputs 1, if they are perpendicular (90 degrees) to each other, it outputs 0, if they point in opposite directions, it outputs -1. Is there a way I can do this with a different angle instead of 90 degrees?

This may not even be a practical thing for this use case, but it's something I wanted to learn and understand anyways. Still pretty new to shaders and lighting.

Also I agree it'd be great to have a separate forum or something. It's a little intimidating posting in this huge thread.

Edit: Actually I think I might be able to do this with the step node, but I'd still like to hear it from someone more experienced...

 

Is it possible to use Shader Forge to author a deferred shader that will modify the normals in the g-buffer before lighting is done? It's a task a bit similar to what shaders in the Unity 5 Command Buffers example project do, except I do not need any fancy projection, bounding boxes and other fluff - I just want to add floaters with decal material to my objects. How should I go about this?

 

Is it possible to:
A) Use global scale for UV's
B) Add a fade-out/opacity drop around edges?

As a reference for B, I am talking about the fade out on the edges like this: