[Best Tool Asset Store Award] Amplify Shader Editor - Node-based Shader Creation Tool

Hello,
how can I use Speed X and Speed Y as variable in Panner node ?

 

@Amplify_RnD_Rick is it possible to modify depth buffer with ASE? SV_Depth

 

Could you be more specific? I'm not sure if I understand you correctly. Height fogs are usually screen space shaders, not exactly something you do on a per object basis.

There are two things worth mentioning in your post.
The first is how you should be using the unpackscalenormal node. If you don't mark a normalmap as such in the importer you need to make sure you follow the same way normal maps are read and used inside the shader, meaning that you have to change X and Y components to be read in the A and G channels respectively and only then you can use that node. Here's a more clear example with the difference between the two:


The other part, the one you actually asked about, is actually pretty simple, the "world normal" node accepts a normal vector in tangent space, which is the same to say that it accepts a normal map, that will give you the world normal perturbed by the normal map, like this:

What you are looking for is the "Texture Sample" node (which you are already using in some instances). If you want to connect to the same texture asset we have a node called "Texture Object"

There are multiple ways to use components of a node, you could use a mask or break to individuals components, what exactly are you having difficulties with? (PS: turn the wire colors and on or off with W or CTRL+W)

Not directly, you can't. The panner is just a simple way to add a time variable to the UVs, it's not out of the question to expose the speeds in the node itself but it wasn't the original idea. If you want to achieve the same results and have the speed exposed for you to control, you would do something like this:

 

Thank you so much for such kind words.
This is quite odd indeed. It would be immensely helpful if you could send us a small sample with this issue occurring so we can replicate this flicker behavior on our end and find out what might be causing it.

Apologies on this huge delay! More so because its a really useful tool!
You can already create arrays by using the 'Global Array' node. This started as a community node on which picked up and are expanding its functionalities.
Suggestions on how we can improve its behavior are always welcome.

Unfortunately no, since it's a limitation from surface shaders themselves.

 

Yeah i understand about the Surface Shader limitation, i'm just wondering if you find a workaround. Any way no problem then.
Thanks

 

Thks for the reply about array, but I have a problem: I'd like to make an array but cannot find this "Global Array" node that you speak about. When i search for "Array" in the search bar, I just have "Texture Array".
So, thks if you could help me with that, and anyway, thks for all the good work done with ASE !

 

Hello Ase team,

I would be glad to send you a sample, what do you want me to include in the package, how should I distribute it? Is a Zip containing the shader fine? Also could you please provide me the email address you would want me to send this to please?

Thank you so much for your quick reply.

 

That's quite strange. Which ASE version are you using?
Is it possible for you to download our latest version through our website?
You just need to write your ASE invoice number into the textfield and hit the Unlock button.

No problem at all. We'll try to figure what is happening as soon as possible.
Since this is an issue which might depend on more than the shader we would like to ask you to export a package directly from Unity containing a simple scene with your shader+material assigned to an object.
For you to create a package, go to your project view, select the files you want to export ( including dependencies ), hit the right mouse button on them and select Export Package... .
This way we can have the same setup as you on our end and hopefully replicate the flickering.
If possible send that package to support@amplify.pt.

 

Dude that is FREAKING BEAUTIFUL!!!!

 

Hey ASE team! Cheers on the asset, you can see a lot of jaw-dropping effects being created by the community, and it's really nice to see you guys giving feedback on the forums.

I'm planning on buying ASE once we're finished working on a project (we're using SF, so we'd rather not mix things up for now), and I'm wondering how's the multiple pass feature looking on your roadmap so far. It's something we've been really looking forward to have (especially since we use a lot of stencil buffer combinations in our game), so I'd like to know if we should be looking forward to it in the near future, or if we shouldn't get our expectations too high.

I couldn't find any recent info in regards to that, so I apologize if that's been answered before.

Thanks!

 

@Amplify_Paulo Re: height fog

I can write a screen space post processing effect to apply fog or height fog, but on mobile this is costly. (Fill rate limitations). Instead, we could calculate our fog (or height fog) in the shader that renders the object itself. If every object on screen uses this shader, we will have 'full screen'/'scene wide' height fog effect.

I can calculate height fog easily with Amplify. The issue is I need to apply to fog after lighting has been calculated. If I multiply the albedo with the fog, and plug it in to the shader output node, my fog will have lighting applied to it (Not desired). The fog needs to be multiplied with the result of the lighting.

So.. for example, I could have an unlit shader, 'manually' calculate lambert lighting, calculate height fog and multiply it with the result of the lambert lighting. Then I emit this pixel (Unlit) and I have a correctly lit object + height fog applied to it. If every object in the scene is using the shader, we have scene wide height fog.

Assuming this is the best way to go...:

1) It would be really convenient if there were 'lambert' and 'blinnphong' nodes for us to use in our own Unlit shaders
2) There would need to be some way to support lightmapping in these 'unlit' shaders

 

To be totally honest, we already have something not release yet that already allows you to do that and/or many other things people have been requesting (like: skin shaders, vertex frag, better outlines, multipass, etc). Unfortunately we've been fighting some other logistic battle that's been preventing our latest features to be released (more on this in the future). So, to the answer if it will be possible, yes, it already is. When? Not sure, until we solve this issue it's hard to tell.

Have you tried the new custom lighting mode? I'm not sure how exactly would it work for all of your cases but theoretically it should be fine. You can then do the standard lighting in custom lighting and do whatever you want with the result. Take a look at the two layer example we recently added.

Also, it's true that usually screen effects are too expensive for mobile but adding those same calculation on a per object shader isn't any cheaper if all the objects on the screen have it, in fact, if everything has it, it's only more expensive. There are many factors for this, one for example is overdraw, if you happen to need to draw on some pixel twice you'll need to do the calculation twice. I would highly recommend you to revisit the screen shader option. Create a test scene and do some measuring. You'll probably be surprised with the result.

 

Been messing around with ASE for a few weeks now and am loving it so far! I am having a problem trying to get view space positions as a screen space UV coordinate. I thought that the "Screen Position" node would give me the desired result but it is not. I am not very shader literate and so any help pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

I am trying to use a replacement shader to give me a UV position needed for a PostEffect. I uploaded a picture to hopefully get the idea across.

 

To control my colors better I want to make a fog ramp. Since I'm rendering in deferred, this needs to be a post process, How do I do that with ASE?

 

I don't know why you want the left result or what you are comparing with, the difference between the tow is gamma conversion. In ASE if you use "GammaToLinear" right next to the screen position it should get you the same result. Thing is, the result on the right is correct. This is because screen position is being generated inside the shader in linear space, but the final result from unity gets converted depending on your project settings. Don't worry so much on how it looks, just use it as it is to do something, like mapping a texture or something, and check if the results are the same in both gamma and linear setups.

How do you create a post process effect? You'll have to wait a bit longer until we roll out our new feature that allows you to do that.

 

@Amplify_Paulo

Ok, disregard the details of my problem. I am just wondering, if I do custom lighting is there some way to support lightmapping or am I doing something wrong?

 

A "bit" is a weeks or months?

 

Hello everyone!

First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of recent ASE updates. Unfortunately, we are having some legal issues with another publisher that infringed our copyright by using our editor source code to develop their own package. The use of our material is so extensive that this matter cannot be ignored, as so, we have no choice but to delay our updates until we find a viable solution to this problem.

We issued a DMCA takedown and are currently in talks with said publisher.

You will be happy to know that development on our side has not stopped, we have many new improvements and a major new feature ready to be added to the main package. We will keep you posted on any related news and possible changes.

Thank you for your patience.

 

Thx for reporting that, indeed there's an issue with lightmaps in the custom lighting mode, the light color is getting deleted in some cases resulting in all weird outcomes. I have a quick fix for it that you can expect in the next build. Do keep in mind tho that you'll need to use the new "custom standard lighting" node in the custom lighting setup like I said previously because that's the node that does the necessary unity gi and lightmap calculations. It's not entirely out of question to support lightmaps into a completely custom lighting shader, it's actually something I eventually would like to tackle.

Sorry for inconvenience, you can expect a fix very soon.

 

Thx for the update and sorry to hear that guys! Wish you guys the best and hope it resolves soon!

 

Thank you for understanding, we really appreciate it. Hopefully we can resolve it quickly, the publisher was honest and confirmed having used infringing content, perhaps unknowingly placed by their developers. In any case, the deed is done, so to speak, and we now have to agree on a possible solution.

We will keep you all posted!

 

I guess 2d shader editor? Oh man, I hope not, I own and like that asset

 

Our apologies but we prefer not to comment at the moment.

 

Hey Guys .
Just played around with the Shader Editor and i made a Leaf Shader for our Foliage System.
I was wondering if there is anything for Wind in it ?

 

We have considered offering different types of licenses but we do not have any specific plans at the moment.

Awesome, looking forward to seeing it in action. No wind control at the moment but I recommend checking the Smear sample for a simple example on how to pass custom values to your shader via script.

Thanks!

 

I am curious about this foliage shader... I am looking to use lightweight shaders for vegetation and I hope I can do one that can run fast.

 

I'm just making a simple Splat Shader with tessellation, but I get the error "....undeclared identifier "temp_cast_2"..." when the height is attached to the "Local Vertex Offset."

Edit: Ok I just updated and I don't have that issue anymore, but my whole material is now gray.

Edit: Fixed that but now I get "'tex2Dlod': no matching 4 parameter intrinsic function; Possible intrinsic functions are: tex2Dlod(sampler2D, float4|half4|min10float4|min16float4)"
Funny thing is all I did was edit the Ambient Occlusion which isn't even connected to the height.

 

Hello all. I here agan. My msg @Amplify_Ricardo : may be for good look need set ASE (& other Amplify tools menus not as Window, but to Tools/Amplify/Tool name (windows menu is very long )

 

Hi everyone.

I am writing to thanks Amplify Creations for a great asset, allowing us to make ammmmazing things, and for their worldwide known support.
We are the very first customer of this asset - purchased it like 20 minutes after it was released (and you can see my review in Asset Store page is the first one). By then it was very rough (version 0.1) but already showed cool potential. And now, after a year of development it yields miracles in proper hands.

To support Amplify Creations I've made this video:

- it just demonstrates shaders we made, without technical details.
I hope this will be inspiring for tech artists and will at least a little bit promote Amplify Creations.

Thank you, guys, for your amazing job!

P.S. I hereby grant Amplify Creations permission to spread this video anywhere they'd like, refer it and use in any way to promote ASE or themselves.

 

Hey there, what do you recommend?

 

Hey LittleRainGames,
By your post we're not quite sure if you were able to solve the issue you had. If it's not fixed could you to share your shader with is ( via support@amplify.pt ) so we can check on our end what might be happening?

Whoa, we feel really humbled by your post! Thank you so much for being our first ASE customer and putting such a huge trust in us!

In other news, we just uploaded a new build into our website.

Here are the release notes:

Release Notes v1.2.1 dev 01:

• Improvements:
  • Major refactor on all nodes categories and colors to improve consistency
  • Added subtitle to 'Swizzle' and 'Component Mask' nodes to reflect their options
  • Added configurable background color for 'Commentary' nodes
• Fixes:
  • Fixed issue with lightmaps when using the 'Standard Surface Light' node on Custom Lighting Light Model
  • Fixed issue on overwriting default texture values on 'Texture Sample' node when loading values from material

On this build we completely reviewed all nodes categories and respective colors. For us this a perfect timing to do this ( and a bit of a must ) since we are on the process of writing all the nodes documentation and re-taking shots.
With this review we feel that we achieved a more consistent ( and coherent ) look.

Happy shader creations!

 

My recommendation is set 2 string in source files:

in About.cs:
[MenuItem( "Tools/Amplify/Amplify Shader Editor/About...", false, 20 )]

in AmplifyShaderEditorWindow.cs :
// Unity Menu item
[MenuItem( "Tools/Amplify/Amplify Shader Editor/Open Canvas" )]

 

Got it, thank you for the recommendation

 

Thank you 2 for good job

 

Thank you for your support.

 

Hi ASE and Unity members.

I have Shader Forge and bought ASE a while back and have begun to slowly move over to ASE and my latest project is 100% ASE and I want to ensure that all my shaders are ASE created.

I am hoping that someone might have a quick answer to help me decide if ASE will be able to help in the creation of a shader that is needed for my project. Some might question why I need this but I really do have a strong requirement.

I currently have a very old Fixed Function shader the provides me with realtime Vertex Lighting on top of a Lightmap produced by Enlighten. I know that Unity officially advise that this type of shader is not supported in Unity 5.0 and above. However, this old shader still works and does what I need it to do but it is not optomised and I have struggled to extend it or translate it to CG. It appears that Unity sort of sticks its nose in and stops things from working!? Here is an example of a similar shader altough mine has no specular just diffuse. https://github.com/cmroche/UnityVertexLightmapping/blob/master/Assets/Normal-VertexLit.shader

I quickly realised that SF does not suport vertex lighting but I did notice that ASE does support vertex lights and lightmaps and both shader option tick boxes can be on at the same time!

My hope is renewed!!!!!

QUESTION: Before I get to excited and spend hours trying to develop a node graph. Can ASE support the creation of such a realtime vertex light over the top of an Enlighten Lightmap or are these two tick boxes mutually exclusive?

If this is possible what approach would be recommended and what limitataions should I expect to manage using ASE?

Has anyone already attempted such a shader in ASE?

Thank you
Dan.

 

Thx a lot for the kind works, good job there

Unfortunately, you can't, at least not yet. First let me tell you that the option of vertex lights is not the same as the rendering path vertexlit. While I'm guessin the visual result is actually kind similar in both if done properly the rendering path is way to maximize performance by ignoring everything pixel based. The vertexlit path needs it's own render passes to work, passes that are not generated by surface shaders which is the only kind of shaders the editor has right now :\

Fortunately tho, we've been working on a new feature that will allow you to create vertex frag shaders, and more specifically your tailor fitted vertex frag shader. So you'll be able to have those passes and thus your vertexlit with lightmap support. This feature is actually pretty complete, but since we had the legal issues Ricardo's talked about earlier we've been holding off the release of that feature until we get a good solution. I hope you can understand and be patient.

cheers

 

Hi Paulo,

Thank you for taking the time to respond and pointing out a few facts about ASE. I am more than happy to sit tight and wait for the vertex fragment features to be released. Just over the moon that you are adding this!!!

Thank you Amplify.
Dan

 

Why is there so much noise in my shader?
Amplify on the left and Unity on the right. Not the same texture but almost, they both have the same snow from a substance.

 

Hi,
i got an issue. I cannot edit anymore a created shader.
Latest ASE and Unity 2017.

 

Hey guys, has anyone had any luck with creating a wireframe overlay shader with ASE? I would like to use this shader to take snapshots for my portfolio

 

Is it possible to have a sort of Negative rim light which can add shadow color to the rim instead of light?

 

It could be various reasons, maybe your tilling is too high? Or you are using the texture sample with lod levels turned on with level 0? Send us your shader and I can take a look.

That's weird, did this happen after the upgrade? Have you tried reopening unity or resetting unity layout? Does it happen with all shaders? just one? only when you are creating one? Send us a broken example so we can take a look, meanwhile try closing any ASE tabs and re-importing the package.

Shadow doesn't have color, it's the absence of light, in unity this usually means it gets the indirect diffuse color. You can put your shader in custom lighting mode and use the indirect diffuse light node to get that but then you'd need to do something with it. I'm guessing you want to remove and not add that to the rim light?

 

is there a way to add support for lightprobes in ASE? Shader forge had some code Node that you could use it but I better use ASE since is nicer It will realy help out.

 

By default all shaders should already support gi with lightprobes. If you want to do something more fancy with them you can always switch to custom lighting. There you have to do your own lighting (or use the surface node to recreate unity's) and you have access to a node called "indirect diffuse light" which will give you the probes result.

 

Hey guys,

We've just uploaded a new build into our website.
Here are the release notes:
Release Notes v1.3.0 dev 01:

• New Features:
  • Templates
    • Create new shaders from already existing ones which serves as base/templates
• Fixes:
  • Fixed issue on ports internal data not showing on 'Append' node
  • Fixed infinite loop on 'Texture Coordinates' and 'Texel Size' nodes

On this one we are introducing the first iteration of a new feature called Templates.



With templates we are aiming to fill the gap of only being able to create surface shaders. This feature allows you to create an ASE shader from an already existing shader which will be used as base, or template ( hence the new feature name ).

For you to create an ASE shader using templates you can hit the right mouse button on your project view, select Create > Amplify Shader and from that menu you'll be listed with the default ASE Surface Shader plus all the available templates.

You can, at any time, swap which template your are using on a given shader by hitting the Shader Type dropdown option on your Output Node properties window and selecting a new one. You can even switch to our original default surface shader.

Here are the templates which are already available and ready to use:

• Post-Process
• Default Unlit
• Default UI
• Default Sprites
• Particles Alpha-Blended

For now templates are bound to single pass vertex/frag shaders, but we will expand it in the future to much more than that.

Also, a new 'Templates Parameter' node is introduced with templates. It gives you access to Properties and Global Variables that are available on the template so you can reuse them on the graph as you see fit.

Last but not least, we already have some examples created using templates. You can find them at AmplifyShaderEditor > Examples > Official > TemplateExamples.

We are redoing our online documentation and will also include a new templates section explaining in detail how you can create your own templates.

We had to do some big changes on this update. We strongly recommend you to backup your shaders and current ASE version before importing this build.

Your feedback is really important so please don't hesitate on reaching us if you come across into any issue, strange shader behavior or error/warning message in the console.

Happy shader creations!

 

Holy crap, that's fantastic!

I will finally be able to do some proper post processing!

By the way, what is the difference between "Particles Alpha-Blended" and what we currently have? We can already do some transparent shaders and put it on the particles?

 

There is an integration with MegaSplat. Will you also have an ingestion with MicroSplat?

 

Just used this new version to create our Alamo shader for the Alamo Reality AR project. First shader and I had some questions. Here are the details of the shader.

Write up on how it works:
https://public.3.basecamp.com/p/oTZSntqtnpobGTrE4WmpRq6P



First off, how best to benchmark this shader for mobile? I look at the stats during play and the frame rate seems just about the exact same as a plain default white Unity shader. Does that mean there's no appreciable overhead? I have about half-a-dozen LERPs in it and didn't know how that might affect things.

Second, is there a way to turn off the Tiling and Offset for a texture? I know when you add a UV to it you cannot then Tile it, but how to remove them from the interface?

Also, I'm interested in knowing more about authoring shaders. When a material is complete, can I 'give away' the shader and material to someone who does not have Amplify Shader or do they need AS to run?

FWIW, tried doing this in Shader Forge and it did not seem possible as their implementation of PBR shaders is way different than Unity default PBR and results in very dark surfaces. It appears they 'fail' on baking. I did the same test with Amplify Shader and it worked fine! Thanks

 

It looks like I will be able to create the ASE version of the Alloy hair shader...