Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

Oups...

 

I actually did what you just shared but I just don't get any gradient between the sky colors... Am I missing some shader settings? Shouldn't I make use of the view position somewhere in the shader so that the Skybox actually has some kind of gradient?

Thanks

 

If I did it right, I think your code node is equivalent to:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. return abs(fmod(floor(iValue), 2.0f) - frac(iValue));
3.  

 

SF uses the fragment shader for almost everything, but that's necessary to make SF easy to use. It'd be nice to have an automatic Optimize-My-Shader button, but it would have to handle tons of special cases and would likely still require some hand-tuning since it's pretty much impossible to predict what the SF user wants out of a shader. You don't have to optimize anything by hand, but I've seen first hand that it can prevent tons of calculations by just moving a lot of vertex-based calculations from the fragment to the vertex shader.

Maybe verify that you're setting the colors in the material? As for shader settings, it should be Unlit/Custom. The view position/direction isn't necessary unless you're trying to do over-the-top effects.

You're a wizard.

 

Answered my own question about opening the compiled shader in Unity 5. For anyone else that wants it, here's some c# code. Put it in an Editor folder. It adds an item when you right click a shader in the Project window.

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using UnityEditor;
3. using System.Reflection;
4.  
5. public class ViewCompiledShaderSource : ScriptableObject {
6.  
7.     [MenuItem("Assets/View Selected Shader Source")]
8.     static void MenuGiveScenePostProcess() {
9.         string path = AssetDatabase.GetAssetPath(Selection.objects[0]);
10.         var shader = (Shader)AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath(path, typeof(Shader));
11.         MethodInfo openShader = typeof(ShaderUtil).GetMethod(
12.             "OpenCompiledShader",
13.             BindingFlags.Static | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
14.     // Uncomment the following lines to log the parameters
15.         //ParameterInfo[] paramss = openShader.GetParameters();
16.         //foreach(ParameterInfo pms in paramss) {
17.         //    Debug.Log(pms.ParameterType.ToString() + " " + pms.Name +
18.         //        ", optional: " + pms.IsOptional);
19.         //}
20.         openShader.Invoke(null, new object[] { shader, 1, 0, false });
21.     }
22.  
23.     [MenuItem("Assets/View Selected Shader Source", true)]
24.     static bool ValidateMenuGiveScenePostProcess() {
25.         return Selection.objects.Length < 2 && Selection.objects.Length > 0 &&
26.             Selection.objects[0].GetType().Equals(typeof(Shader));
27.     }
28. }

 

Hi guys. I am delving into some advances shader and i wonder is there is some way to reach some result similar to this (maybe with vertex offset):

I have tried to do it by animation but i really don't know how to do this kind of animation readable by unity (I am using 3dmax).

 

Using 3ds, export the animation to fbx or use the free fbx-converter-tool from autodesk. Then, import it as a generic animation. Look up some tutorials if you need them. I really think that type of animation is beyond the scope of real-time shaders unless you want to spend forever tweaking it to look just right.

 

Hi all! I'm thinking of buying Shader Forge, but I have a question first: Can I control aspects of a custom shader with scripts?

Eg: I have a model with a base diffuse/reflection/spec map. When the model is destroyed, I want to multiply a damage map over the base map using a script.

Answer yes, point me towards an example, and you've got yourself a customer

 

@The_Least yes any value can be changed through script.

example
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Material.SetTexture.html
or
http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Material.SetFloat.html

it just takes a little setup in sf.

 

Hello! Have a couple questions about specular in shader forge

1.In deffered mode specular are extremly bright and have an ugly edges unlike of forward mode
2. When backfacing is on all faces have strange cutout of specular

Thanks!

 

Perfect, thanks! I went ahead and bought SF and have already built my lovely new shader. Almost too easy!

 

What versions of Unity and SF are you using? Do you have all of the standard slots filled in with something?

Yeah, regarding the difficulty of various ways to make shaders, Shader Forge is definitely The_Least difficult.

 

My second day of Shader Forge has convinced me that this is the best buy I've made on the asset store so far.

I've recreated a hidden object shader as described by @Murgilod in post #2420 (pg49), and while it works as intended, it has an awkward side effect: As well as highlighting the object when obscured by an object, it also highlights when obscured by its own geometry. Check out my goofy-looking Kaiju:



You can see that his tail is being correctly highlighted because it's behind the building, but his legs, right arm and mouth interior are also highlighted. Can this be fixed without post-processing? (I don't have Unity Pro)

 

So, as some of you may have noticed - I've been rather busy these last few days, so development has fallen behind quite a bit. That said, there are some of you out there who are good coders, and would want to get things done as quickly as possible.

I'm considering opening up source code access to a few select developers on GitHub - Would this be of interest to any of you?

You could do pull requests, and I'll merge it into main and push out updates in case it's good and stable code

 

That's the best idea. It'd be nice for whoever is working on it to have some guidance via a roadmap though, kind of like how Blender coders have a hierarchy and priority of tasks.

 

Thanks a lot for the reply. I will try it soon! but will Unity read a no-bones animation done with modifiers in max?

 

I have no idea. I don't use Max or keyframed vertex-animation. That said, why not use bones? That seems like the more flexible way to do it. Or even blendshapes tied to the update loop?

 

Hi,
I would to make a shader for Skyshop where I can blend beetween 2 different skies created with it.
Using the skies as a reflection map my shader is inconsistent compared to Skyshop shaders.
So I miss something, maybe because Skyshop blend skies with the diffuse map in some way.
Anyone can help me to find the right way to make the shader?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

I know another plugin considered this but decided against doing this because of some legal issues of eventually selling code written by someone else. I'd hate to see something like that happen with SF, so it might be worth getting something written up so that the select developers relinquish all rights to their code, etc. Or something, maybe this was already implied..

 

About the specular, I think it's because Shader Forge remaps gloss values from 0-1 to 1-2048 in forward rendering, but in deferred it's mapped to 0-128. This will create specular inconsistencies between forward and deferred modes, which can lead to problems like this. Unfortunately, because of how lighting works in deferred mode, gloss values can only be mapped between 0-128 (all of Unity's built-in shaders are like this). The best solution (if I'm right) is to either disable the deferred pre-pass and only use forward rendering for that shader, or manually remap the gloss values in your forward pass to 0-128 (Disable "Remap gloss from [0-1] to [1-2048]" and add a remap node to your gloss input, see screenshot). It won't fix the bright specular in deferred mode, but it should make it look similar in forward mode at least.

 

Does anyone know if there will be a replacement to unity_Scale.w in Unity 5? I've tested the new ObjectScale node in SF 1.04 under Beta 0.22 but I'd like to know what will be coming to us from UT itself. Does anyone know?

 

Hi Joachim,

We are looking at getting your shader editor and i just have a few questions before we jump in :

I am pretty much a rookie regarding shader so i hope my questions will be clear enough,

The game we are working on is mostly setup in a snowy environment and since we are using RTP in our pipeline i was a little disappoint that SF was not going to work in RTP to replace actual snow shader with a custom one.

Is there any workaround or a possibility that you can support RTP in the near future?

If i am correct i think that SF shader wont work for terrain?

regards Peter

 

Count me in!

 

This has been bugging me for the last couple of days. Haven't been able to figure it out and am hoping someone here can shed some light on it.

I'm essentially trying to pan a texture across a surface in both directions at the same time, but have it masked by, in this case, the blue vertex channel. Directions would be controlled by a slider for scripting purposes.

Wherever the blue value is 1, or 0, it works great. anything in between and I get garbage. I would expect this to blend nicely and just show a mix of both textures in motion. This is a simplified version of my shader, but I've narrowed it down to something in here: Any thoughts?

 

Because you're blending the UVs, it's garbled. The proper way is one texture look-up for one direction and another for the other. Same rule for triplanar mapping. And water. Every time I see a garbled mess, I make sure I didn't do that with the UVs. Most of the time, I did. Is that the problem you're having?

 

I've personally used SF shaders for terrain. RTP is shaders. It would be unreasonable to think that Shader Forge should dissect RTP's shaders to replace the snow shader. You might ask RTP's developer if it's even possible to replace the snow shader with any other shader. If I remember using RTP, everything is built-in and a bit difficult to customize.

This makes sense, but it's a bit different if you're making derivatives instead of new code from scratch. That said, I'd gladly surrender all of my rights to any contribution I made to SF. There are some rare licenses out there that give the original creator complete ownership of all derivatives - might be worth having that spelled out for anyone that signs up to help.

 

Hi IFL,

Yes you are right and i was in doubt that it could be possible at all.

I already ask Tom about replacing the snow shader and he told me that it would be mental madness plain and simple!

The only thing he said that was possible is to tweak his own snow shader but yet i don't know how tweakable they are, we don't need very sophisticated snow shader since it is an online game but we would like to make it look the way we want like adding some sparkles effect and changing the hue that about it.

I guess i will have to first install RTP and see what parameters are available to tweak it.

Regards Peter

 

Would anyone able able to assists with the DDX and DDY nodes in Shader Forge?

Apparently they can help solve the atlas border seam problem we're currently having:

 

Looks like your texture needs to be set to Wrap Mode: Clamp. Might be that simple, but hard to tell without context.

 

That seemed to work to work for me so far! Its an odd issue, seems like the math should work. Thanks!

 

It works if it's either 0 or 1. If it's anything else, the coordinates will blend, for example, somewhere between -8000 and +8000, depending on how far the time variable have gotten, which could end up anywhere in the texture.

I presume you want fluid-like blending and distortion, in which case I recommend looking into flow mapping

 

That makes sense. Thanks for the reply! Already got my flowmap shader ready for a different use, but for this one, since its specific for gameplay and a distinct look and functionality, it wont work for this application. Thanks for the suggestion though!

 

Hello, just a small suggestion. Could you make a place on your wiki where people can post user created shaders created with shader forge? Be nice, especially for beginners that don't have any idea where to start.

edit: actually if you are worried about people without shader forge accessing it, maybe some authentication where you need an invoice number to restrict access?

 

Thanks for the info. Let me know if you find out anything else.

This page?

 

Ok sure, but there is hardly anything in it.

Come on people!

 

Been searching through the blending settings, but cant figure this one out. Looking to achieve the effect of this shader:

http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=AlphaVertexLitZ

I'd rather not hand edit the shader so we can keep it iterative. Any ideas?

 

Alpha Blended, Write to Depth Buffer... Does that work?

 

Unfortunately that wont work. Was the first thing I tried. But it hides all other transparent objects behind it in the scene. The above example doesn't write to the depth buffer, but still self-occludes.

 

Well, I don't think that is possible with SF currently. Editing the code is the only way. If anyone knows differently, please correct me on this.

 

Hello guys, I'd like to make a shader that imitates a shockwave on a 2D texture, similar to this :
http://www.geeks3d.com/20091116/shader-library-2d-shockwave-post-processing-filter-glsl/
I've been trying to figure out how to achieve the effect, but couldn't since I'm hyper new to shaders.
Can anyone please screenshot a node tree of this shader, or better, attach the shader file ?
Also, how can I use this shader so that it's triggered by an event ( mouse click for example) ?

 

Well, we can get you started The whole give a man a fish, teach a man to fish kinda thing. The effect can be done either with refraction or vert offset, Both are on the main node in SF. Create a heightmap (2d texture node) that looks like a radial gradient going from white to black to white. Add a scaler node and scale it up over time. plug that into your refraction or your vert offset slot. You might need to do some research on how to use each of these nodes, but there is plenty of info around on that.

As far as the mouse click thing, that will have to be done through script, and not part of the shader.

That should at least point you in the right direction to get started. Dont give up, good luck!

 

Ah, thanks a bunch KaylMyers!
I've been toying with SF, I understood most of what you said, so I'll be giving it a try in the near time.

 

Hello everyone,
Just purchased Shader Forge, seems very powerful but the lack of tutorials is a little dissapointing. (Only 3 it appears). I'm mainly working on 2D projects at the moment and as such am trying to create shaders for 2D applications.

I'm trying to achieve a simple drop shadow effect like seen here: http://forum.brackeys.com/thread/2d-shadowing-in-unity/

Could anyone help point me in the right direction? Currently I've set my Texture 2D to Alpha Clip so my texture is transparent where it should be. I was then trying to use the Outline Width Node to possibly create a drop shadow but can't figure out what needs to be inputed into it.

I'm brand new to shader forge and would be grateful for some help and direction, thanks!

 

We have a bunch of shaders we wrote in Shader Forge and would like to upgrade to U5 deferred rendering. Can we do this with Shader Forge yet?

 

Personally I stopped doing U5 stuff with shader forge for now, after various things got changed in recent Unity 5 betas/release candidates which rather broke shader forge support (at least for me).

 

I need to make a thing similar to Diablo 3 resource sphere (mana etc.). I've found an article (http://simonschreibt.de/gat/diablo-3-resource-bubbles/) on how to do this but that seams that this article is intended for more competent shader creators then me. I need to create a shader that takes a surface texture and makes it into a sphere (it will be a 2D game so using a simple 3D sphere with the texture is not an option). Can you show me the way of doing this in Shader Forge?

 

yh shader forge is completly broke for me now to with U5, best wait till U5 is officially released for an update. One question will shader forge replicate unitys standard U5 Shaders as sort of a base starting point?
i really like U5 standard shaders but as i have little knowledge of shader language its impossible for me to customize it.

 

Got the same problem, am currently staying on b18 because everything higher breaks shader forge and oh now, I can't live without it

 

I was trying this before too much changed in Unity 5 betas and ShaderForge stopped working. It wasnt perfect, but I was getting close without too much effort, so I am fairly confident it will be quite easy once ShaderForge is fixed for Unity 5.