water over billboard trees problem

Hi,
I used the Transparent/Bumped Specular shader to make my own water shader for a river and lake. As you can see from the attached picture, the river/water shows through the tree in front of it -- but only when the tree is billboarded. I found a thread with a similar question and answer here http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/77544-3.2-Water-over-billboard-trees, but the fix given by Code Monkey involved editing the FX-Water3.shader like this:

I would like to see if I can edit the Transparent/Bumped Specular shader in a similar way if possible, but it does not seem to have an Edit button like most of the other shaders. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Zaffer

 

ive been having the same problem :/

 

Hi asdf1234,

I found the answer! You have to get the Unity built-in shader into your project and edit that. I posted directions on how to do this in the Answers forum. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/232641/transparent-shader-water-showing-over-billboard-tr.html Hope this works for you.

Zaffer

 

I have the same problem and used the solution to customize my transparent shader as described above ("Queue"="Transparent-200").
Right, it works!

But there are two points why I think it´s not a satisfying solution:

1. When using multiple transparent shaders, we have to edit them all by hand.
2. What about the special case of a transparent glass-architecture-facade where trees are placed in front of it and also behind it?
Trees that stand behind the facade now appear in front it (of course!).
Read more about this problem here.

For Point 1 I would say it´s best to change the trees billboard shader instead!
We can download it here.
It´s placed in builtin_shaders\DefaultResources\TerrainShaders\Trees\BillboardTree.shader

Here I write "Queue"="Transparent-50" in line 7 and 379. This should work - right?
But it doesn´t :-(
I´m not sure if Unity already uses my custom billboardshader:
How to tell Unity to use my custom BillboardTree.shader instead of the original?

For Point 2 I don´t see any smart solution, do you?
I´m very happy with Unitys internal DepthSorting of transparent objects in general, but it should also work with billboarded trees!

 

I see, but: When I use a standard-unity transparency-shader there´s no problem at all.
As soon as I use my own shader (written in Strumpy) I get this problem.

So, there must be something in Unitys shaders that solves it, right?