Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

How can i create an edge glow with a blue color in the shader i currently have? I get the impression i need to mess with my alpha clip more.

 

Thank you Ace, Not taken the wrong way, I do understand and I am sorry I needed such basic assistance but it is very much appreciated. I won't ask any non SF questions in the future.

 

Not using deferred unfortunately, changing the models of the voxel isn't possible because the effect should be visible on all meshes. Since the game will support modding in the future, it will import user meshes. Not sure what to do with DepthTextureMode reallly - no idea where to start.

 

DDX/DDY are intrinsics of the graphics card; they give you the partial derivatives of the 2x2 pixel block being shaded, and thus cannot be computed per triangle or even changed by unity. On newer cards there are multiple variants of these functions (ddx_fine, etc), and some older cards do not expose them at all, but they are fundamental to how a graphics card draws pixels.

 

Can somebody give me a child's guide to DDX/DDY and what they can be used for? Because these things are making me way confused.

 

They're used to calculate derivatives (rate of change) of things you otherwise cannot. For instance, if you have a complex vertex deformation, and you then want to have correct normal directions as well, you might be able to do it using ddy/ddx to recalculate the normals.

They're both in screen space though, and basically tell how "How much does this value change, relative to the screen?"

 

There's yet another reason why Shader Forge is awesome: you can play around with stuff you have no clue about, just to see what happens. DDX & DDY can apparently be used to make a ball that shows really crappy outlines of everything behind it.

 

Is there a chance to get a facing node to detect back faces so that normals can be flipped? I saw some discussion on another site, but can't quite find it again. It looks like in the generated shader it already knows about which side is which, but this doesn't seem to be exposed via a node.

 

You could compare a "dissolve" value with your "dissolve mask texture" via step node. 0 on the dissolve value indicating no dissolve. 1 fully dissolved.
If you do the same thing a second time but now with an added threshold/offset to either your dissolve value or the texture (depends on where you plug the two into the step function) you will get second gradient. Now you can subtract the first one from the second one and you will receive the "edge" of your dissolve effect.

 

Can't you already do this with the dot product between the view direction and the triangle normal?

 

It should be exposed, yeah. I'll add it in 1.18

 

I think unity added this functionality in 5.1? (SV_Facing?)

 

That is awesome! thanks so much.

And btw... every time I visit this forum I ask myself the same question. Why is people asking Joachim how to to this and that? I think Joachim decided to develop a tool, not to write a shader coding Bible. I think people should learn by themselves the methods and techniques they need for their purposes instead asking here.

 

@David_MG

In my case, i spend time learning shaders, but sometimes there are deadlines you need to work with and you cant come to a result with limited knowledge and time. The tool is amazing and has taught me much already.

However sometimes there is simply a need for someone to nudge you in the right direction or tell you about a function/node you weren't aware off before. Respectfully, i understand he's made a tool and does his best to support it, but much like most tools on the store (say NGUI at the time) a community of users will form from all levels of expertise. To exclude people is rather elitist.

Perhaps creating a forum for the tool itself rather than a unity thread might be helpful for people to share and help each other? I'm much more in favour of stimulating collaboration as opposed to elitism.

We've all started somewhere.

 

+1 for the forum idea (or a slack chat)

 

+1 on the slack chat, as he already has some stuff on his webpage that is somewhat forum like.
http://shaderforge.userecho.com/
http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
But question regarding shaders, why not ask in shaders subforum HERE?

 

Is this one supposed to look like this? It appears broken, as if CSS files are missing.

 

Ideally there would be a Shader Forge subforum. Perhaps I can talk to Unity and get a Shader Forge topic tag in the Graphics subforum?

 

Graphics subforum would be cool.

 

There is the one over here: http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/shaders.16/
But it would be nice to have a topic tag for Shader Forge that people can add.

 

Yeah I knew that one. Have seen SF related questions over there and answered one or two of them. But a dedicated subforum would be nice... or those topic tags you are speaking of (though I'm not sure what they are and how to use them).

 

There's a tag for UNET now in this subforum. You see it on many of the threads
http://forum.unity3d.com/forums/multiplayer-networking.26/

 

There's also irc.freenode.net #unity3d, where I'm almost always at

 

With the nice addition of the matrix nodes, anybody want to take a crack at determining the world position from the Scene Depth value? I've made some attempts based on code snippets found in the forums, but I can't seem to get results that make any sense.

I've been trying the inverse-projection method, using the following to pass in the relevant matrix, based on several of those snippets:

Code (CSharp):

1. material.SetMatrix("_ViewProjectInverse", (theCamera.projectionMatrix * theCamera.worldToCameraMatrix).inverse);

I've also looked a bit at the Unity-provided Global Fog shader & script, but wasn't sure about reproducing the world-position bits in Shader Forge.

Here are some relevant threads:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/world-position-from-depth.151466/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/world-position-from-view-space-position-yes-again.246315/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/recreating-world-position-from-depth-algorithm.263435/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/world-position-from-depth-in-non-pp-shader.212647/
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/world-position-of-a-pixel-from-depth-texture.97671/

 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! The step node was definitely the one i was after.

 

Could I get some advice on creating a simple waveform? I've searched quite a bit and couldn't find an example of how to accomplish this, so my apologies if it's already been addressed. I'm trying to achieve something like this, by Tomas Sala:


or this, by Willy Chyr:


This is the best I've been able to manage, but I'm at a bit of a loss when it comes to offsetting the wave over time:

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

If you want it to be more of a physically-visual wave instead of just time-based, you need to incorporate (usually add) at least one axis from the fragment/vertex position (UV, local, world, screen, polar, etc) into the algorithm for the wave. Don't forget that you can use multiple waves combined to create a more appealing look for natural effects.

 

Thanks for the response, IFL. I'm not worried about adding randomness or subtlety just yet though, still working on getting the wave to have... waves!

Right now I'm just able to make a flat line go up and down, but I'm shooting for an oscillating waveform. I know it's probably pretty simple but I'm just starting to learn this stuff

 

Hi all.
Working on a color picker plane.

Q: Why do i have to multiply by 1.2? so the top-right Red color looks right?

Ex:


Thanks,
izzy.

 

I think because you're trying to desaturate the color yellow (R1G1B0) and map it to full bright red.

What I think you should do instead is this.
UV (U) is saturation. Lerp between white and (color) by U.
UV (V) is brightness. Multiply said lerp from above by brightness(V).
Grab that, and into emission it goes.

Though, I'm not sure why you'd do it this way? If you want Hue, Saturation and Brightness options available, you'll need the new Hue Node instead of the (color), and some way to move between hues (value).

If you don't want to do it with the Hue node, you'll probably need to cater for cases where the input (color) might be a dark bluish gray or something. Maybe normalize the (color) node (stick a normalize node immediately after it and before anything else) so that it's always got a fullbright value that plays nicely with full saturation and brightness values.

 

Probably because you don't want to use the desaturate node there. Here's a working version:

 

Oh, as a bonus, this will be even more trivial in the next update

 

Awesome. does that also works as a hue shift?

 

Yeah you can plug in pretty much anything in there

 

How to get squares instead of circles? I need to have each pixel has black stroke, the thickness of which is adjustable.

 

Does this help?

 

Yes! Perfect, thank you so much IFL. Adding the panning sin values was what I was missing. Seems so obvious in retrospect. This is very helpful for me

 

Does this help?

 

Hi guys I am trying to make a fade out effect in my shaders. Basically I want to use a slider from 0 to 1 to controle the opacity.

I thought that using a slider conected to the opacity node it will work but I only get weird results. I have tried a lot of combinations with alpha blended and nothing. Do you guys know some tutorials or some method to do that?

When I use Alpha Blended my shaders breaks

 

Spoiler: Original post was updated

Pics or it didn't happen. (preferably at 0.25 and 0.5 on the slider)

 

I think you need to define "weird results"

 

Yes sorry, I have edited the post

 

That's a classic issue with alpha blending in almost any engine out there. Simply "fading" out an object is much harder than it seems. This is something AAA games struggle with as well, even released ones have the artifact visible, even though they try to hide it as much as possible.

 

Ah ok I did not know that.
With the alpha blended mode and a slider connected to the opacity slot I get exactly the effect that I am looking for but I can't fix the strange result of the picture.
Sooo there is some trick to get some similar result to that fade out effect but with the opaque blend mode or it's impossible?

 

opacity at 0,5

 

You could make a dissolve shader: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/sh...sed-shader-editor.222049/page-68#post-2047758

Or use dithered opacity clip, look under the blending settings: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/sh...sed-shader-editor.222049/page-53#post-1900547

 

Thanks I will investigate it! But these methods are compatible with the opaque blend mode?

 

Yes, just make sure all sorting settings are set to alpha clipping

 

Where did everything end up with creating shaders to work with Unity5's Terrain objects? In looking around, it seems like you need to hand edit the code to get them to work properly, But that was a while ago. Did this ever get integrated?

 

Not really, no. Their terrain system, is, to say the least, odd.
You'd be better off rolling your own terrain system