How is the see-through blueprint-looking effect done when placing buildings in an RTS?

In most RTS games, when placing a building, the building is kind of a see-through skeleton of the actual building that will be built once the location and rotation are selected. Then while the building is being constructed it looks like it is slowing coming together within a kind of force field.

How are these effects done?

 

Any transparency effect is always going to be shader-based (and you'll probably get better replies by posting in the shader area of the forum). The "force field" build/placement effect could be a shader, or an animation, or both -- if you post a question in the shader forum I'd suggest including a video showing the type of effect you're looking for.

Writing a transparency effect that applies something like washed out or tinted colors would be pretty trivial. If you aren't familiar with shader programming, that would actually make a great learning project.

 

@MV10 Thanks for the advice. Thanks to whomever for moving me to the Shaders area.

 

For Planetary Annihilation we used a "wireframe" texture that accentuated the edges during the transition, that and a fairly complicated shader.


That's a custom engine, but I rewrote the effect for Unity for a VR demo experience, so it's not anything unique to that engine.

Alternatively you can use something like this:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wireframe-shader-the-amazing-wireframe-shader.251143/

 

@bgolus That is what I was looking for. Thanks. I'll probably get that shader asset.

 

That's sort of hypnotic.

@bgolus, I think you helped somebody once with a shader that produced an effect I have trouble describing. RPG games use it often -- when the player's character walks behind a building or terrain, the outline of the character is shown through the building. Do you remember that? Any idea how to find that thread again?

I was thinking some of the things in that thread might be useful to TokyoDan, as well.

This asset has that effect and others, as shown below for reference; it looks like it's old/broken, and I was thinking more about the value of the discussion in that thread. Unfortunately the forum search thinks "see through" is too short/common to bother searching for...

 

@bgolus and @MV10. Ha! How to do that was one of the next things I was about to ask.

@bgolus. I didn't read your response correctly...You wrote: "For Planetary Annihilation WE used...". So you were one of the developers for Planetary Annihilation?! Wow! That is really impressive. I never thought I'd be getting help from a developer of such a great game.

Also, I always run up against that "too short" problem when searching the forum. I tried putting short queries in quotes but that doesn't work. I wish they'd do something about that.

 

As a hobbyist game dev, it was pretty cool to see that pros are active in the forum and bgolus is one of the most helpful shader guys around. Whenever I ask something here, I hit "Post Reply" then cross my fingers he'll answer, lol.

 

Maybe this one?
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/r...rs-with-ztest-greater-but-ignore-self.429493/
I think I've responded to a couple of different threads asking about it, but that's the best one I could find.

I use Google lately using the "site:" keyword to limit the search. You can use +"stuff" to limit the search to explicit keywords, but also take advantage of Google's smarts and looking for stuff kind of related to what you're looking for.
site:forum.unity3d.com +"bgolus" behind walls
That's what I used to find the above link.

Yes, I'm the tech artist for Uber Entertainment, which means I do the majority of the effects and shader work for our games. We used Unity for Toy Rush, Wayward Sky, Cosmic Chef, and a game that got cancelled. The cancelled project is where I learned a ton about Unity and was frustrated by the lack of that information anywhere, hence why I post here often.

 

Not the one I had in mind, but that one boils down about three pages of discussion into one post.