Question What data should be passed to the shader for normal rendering?

I bake the animation into a texture for better performance, the main step is already done, the vertices themselves are baked and rendered using a shader.

But of course I don’t see on it an answer and a cast of a shadow, or maybe something else.

The question is - what else do I need to bake into the texture to transfer, and what can just be calculated?

(if possible examples or links, or in which direction to move)
below is an example, baked on the left, original on the right (low poly of course)
(URP Project)

 

I made changes in the shader and now it accepts normals, but it still does not react to light, here is the shader

Code (CSharp):

1. Shader "Animations/VertexAnimation"{
2.     Properties{
3.         _MainTex ("Texture", 2D) = "white" {}
4.         _AnimMap ("Animation Texture", 2D) ="white" {}
5.         _AnimNorm ("Animation Normals", 2D) ="white" {}
6.         }
7.     SubShader{
8.         Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" "RenderPipeline"="UniversalRenderPipeline" }
9.         Cull off
10.         Pass{
11.             Tags{ "LightMode"="UniversalForward" }
12.  
13.             HLSLPROGRAM
14.             #pragma vertex vert
15.             #pragma fragment frag
16.             #include "Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal/ShaderLibrary/Core.hlsl"
17.  
18.             struct appdata{
19.                 float2 uv       : TEXCOORD0;
20.                 float4 pos      : POSITION;
21.                 half3 normal    : NORMAL;
22.                 UNITY_VERTEX_INPUT_INSTANCE_ID
23.                 };
24.  
25.             struct v2f{
26.                 float2 uv       : TEXCOORD0;
27.                 float4 vertex   : SV_POSITION;
28.                 float3 normal   : TEXCOORD1;
29.                 UNITY_VERTEX_INPUT_INSTANCE_ID
30.                 };
31.  
32.             CBUFFER_START(UnityPerMaterial)
33.                 sampler2D _MainTex;
34.                 float4 _MainTex_ST;
35.                 sampler2D _AnimMap;
36.                 float4 _AnimMap_TexelSize;
37.                 sampler2D _AnimNorm;
38.                 float4 _AnimNorm_TexelSize;
39.             CBUFFER_END
40.  
41.             float4 ObjectToClipPos (float3 pos){
42.                 return mul (UNITY_MATRIX_VP, mul (UNITY_MATRIX_M, float4 (pos,1)));
43.                 }
44.  
45.             v2f vert(appdata v, uint vid : SV_VertexID){
46.                 UNITY_SETUP_INSTANCE_ID(v);
47.                 float x = (vid + 0.5) * _AnimMap_TexelSize.x;
48.                 float y = fmod(_Time.y / 1, 1);
49.                 float4 pos = tex2Dlod(_AnimMap, float4(x, y, 0, 0));
50.                 float3 normal = tex2Dlod(_AnimNorm, float4(x, y, 0, 0));
51.                 v2f o;
52.                 o.vertex = ObjectToClipPos(pos);
53.                 o.normal = TransformObjectToWorldNormal(normal);
54.                 o.uv = v.uv;
55.                 return o;
56.                 }
57.  
58.             half4 frag (v2f i) : SV_Target{
59.                 half diff = dot(i.normal, float3(0,1,0)) * 0.5 + 0.5;
60.                 half4 col = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv);
61.                 return diff * col;
62.                 }
63.        
64.             ENDHLSL
65.             }
66.        
67.         }
68.     }

what else is missing?

 

https://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/rendering/

 

But I have URP, the usual examples will not work here ...

 

Hi, you can check URP's Lit shader (link is for 2023.1b) to calculate lighting.

The UniversalFragmentPBR is URP's lighting function in "Lighting.hlsl".

Code (CSharp):

1. half4 color = UniversalFragmentPBR(inputData, surfaceData);

I would suggest using shader graph to create this VAT shader because you don't need to manually calculate lighting and adding new URP features to the shader.

You can create custom functions if there's no equivalent node in shader graph.

 

By the way, you should use "SAMPLE_TEXTURE2D_LOD(_AnimMap, sampler_AnimMap, uv, lod)" rather than "tex2Dlod()" in shader graph's custom functions.

Anyway, there's a node for sampling texture2D lod.

 

after digging through the lit shader, I crossed it with my code, in general it turned out, now the baked animation with all the necessary overlays, you can’t distinguish it from the original...
thank you all for your help.