Using Shaders With Canvas Set to "Screen Space - Overlay"

Recently I've been trying to add shaders to my UI elements to snazz things up a bit. However, it seems that anytime I add a material with a shader attached to it to a UI object, that UI object disappears. Normally, my UI objects don't have any materials assigned to them. After doing a little bit of research I've seen some people saying that shaders don't work when your UI canvas is set to "Screen Space - Overlay". Is this true?

When I set the UI canvas to "Screen Space - Camera" or "World Space" my UI breaks. Have others come across this issue? How do I add shaders to my currently existing UI?

 

@DiegoDePalacio Both solutions presented in that forum thread use "Screen Space - Camera" and not "Screen Space - Overlay". Am I correct in my understanding that it is literally impossible to use any shaders at all with "Screen Space - Overlay" and that only certain shaders will be functional with "Screen Space - Camera"?

Bonus question: how do I convert the Render Mode of all my currently functioning UI from Overlay to Camera? It would seem to me that Builtin Layer 5 "UI" is drawn behind Builtin Layer 0 "Default" and that this ordering cannot be changed.

[EDIT]: I was playing around with the sorting layers and was able to create one for the UI. Haven't really messed around with sorting layers before. Would still like confirmation on whether or not "Screen Space - Overlay" is technically capable of supporting shaders at all, though.

 

I want to bump this thread and also mention that shaders absolutely used to work with Screen Space - Overlay, but after some Unity update, these two options appeared in the Shader Graph creation menu:



Until I opened the Shader Graph of an old shader, it worked perfectly fine in my project. However, as soon as I opened it in the Shader Graph tool, the object which had this shader's material assigned to, immediately disappeared. No amount of reverting in source control fixed it.

Upon further examination, I noticed that my custom shader got changed to this new "Experimental" type of Master:



I can guarantee you that this used to be Unlit Master before I updated Unity. The fact that it changed to this broke the shader.

So, my question is: how do I make this work the way it used to work? How am I supposed to change my shader in a way that will make it appear in the Overlay canvas again?

Using Screen Space - Camera is not an option since I spawn the canvas and camera independently from each other, multiple times, and kind of all over the place. The amount of work that changing how this works represents is entirely unreasonable for something this stupid and small.

 

I am in the exact same situation @krides, if I create a new Unlit shadergraph and a material and use that on a Image in my Canvas set to Screen space - Overlay, objects will appear ONTOP of my image depending on Z position of the Image. Sprite Unlit Graph behaves in the same way.

@DiegoDePalacio how can we now create a "UI" shader in shadergraph that will ignore Z positioning and always be renderered ontop as expected when placed on a UI component inside Canvas, Screen space - Overlay?

 

As of now i have same problem (ZTest problem where the UI is not drawn when entering playmode but visible on scene) and i would like as much as possible using screen space overlay for my UI, I solve it using amplify shader editor. I am sorry if this is not a solution for most people but this problem plagueing me for 2 days and shader graph give me a hard time with this particular problem.

 

I am just joining in saying I really wish there was some clarity on why it would work in worldspace but not in overlay.
Not that I like this idea, but do I need to render it to another camera, and then use the camera stacking aspect?

 

I don't think my Shader Graph sprites are working at all with UI, either with Screen Space Overlay or Screen Space Camera. Sprites are invisible while using Sprite Unlit mode, but somehow they work with Sprite Lit.

 

I would like to comment on this topic and give my own experience:
In my case, I can use ShaderGraph within the Canvas in Screen Space - Overlay.
(Although I keep reading everywhere that this is not possible).

You can check in my pre-alpha game here : https://dasprofgames.itch.io/botcombat
(there are red and blue enegy bars with animated water effect obtained using PBR shader)
My versions of Unity and setup are the following:
Linux (Ubuntu 18.04) > Unity 2019.4 (OpenGL 4.5) > Universal Render Pipeline > Canvas Screen Space - Overlay > and Additional Shader Channels are set to TexCoord1 and Tangent.

However adding Normal to Additional Shader Channels [see Canvas options] is a killer.
In my case, adding a TextMeshPro component in my Canvas was the origin of the "bug".
Indeed the use of TextMeshPro will automatically turn ON the Additional Shader Channels Normal option in game mode (not in scene view).
SEE this post : https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...nel-on-a-canvas-resets-when-entering-playmode

Replacing TextMeshPro by normal Text and removing the Normal option to Additional Shader Channels was enough to recover my ShaderGraph in Canvas Screen Space - Overlay.

Hope this can help.

 

ALherbier, thanx a lot! You made my day ) We strugled with this issue for a whole day. Tryed manualy rewrite the shader, swaping our canvases to camera space and fixing problems that came along with that...
And now every thing is work fine.