Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

Hey guys, I recently made a few water shaders and one of them was for a waterfall. It is pretty simple but works really great. Used vertex colors and painted the edges black for better blending. It is uv mapped by scale so can use the same model with material. So used a few techniques that I have not before and am very happy with it.

Issues are I really want to be able to use refraction, but that has many clipping issues. Also have to use alpha blending, but that does not work with fog or sorting or will allow shadows. So the only way to be able to use this shader is an opaque panning shader which looks aweful. Is there any way to have alpha blending, even if no refraction, and receive shadows and work with fog? Just seems like a simple thing. Any plans for Deferred Alpha?

Thanks guys. Really appreciate any help.

 

Where I can find the graph for this?

 

Dithered alpha, Scene Color, or Cubemap are the only ways that I can think of actually making it look okay with SF.

Dithered looks like crap without super-sampling or some other antialiasing image effect.

Spoiler: Dithered Example

(gif scaled to half size, looks much worse at full res - see next pic to compare)

Scene color disables receiving shadows.

Spoiler: Scene Color Example

And the cubemap method (bake reflection probe, use result with Cubemap node with a View Dir connected to a Negate node for the Dir input) looks a bit dated and kind of magnifies whatever is behind the surface, but it can work if you don't need to see moving objects through the water for gameplay and don't mind the magnification look.

Spoiler: Cubemap Example

I hope this helps... I know it's not ideal, and there's probably other methods inside of SF that I don't know about.

I think it's just the default PBR setup with the color set to red, semi-high gloss or low roughness, and low metallic. The sky probably plays a large part in how the shader looks. I could be wrong though.

 

Thanks IFL, the default PBR doesn't give you the transparent settings which is what I'm after.

 

Are you in forward or deferred rendering?

[EDIT::] Works for me. True transparency only works in Forward. So... use Forward, connect something to the Opacity, and then you get that glorious fade/reflective option. And if you're trying to have the camera render in Deferred, you can still use Forward shaders.

 

Working on a realtime shockwave with a complex volumetric smoke rolling out. It gets effected by lights and shadows too if it's opaque rendered. Pretty cheap on the GPU.

 

Thank you so much for the reply. The dithering definitely helps. Never used it before. It is not perfect but I am now able to have it receive shadows and use Deferred which I did not think was possible. Just made a particle shader that uses the same settings with some emission. Not volumetric fog like what I would like but it works was mist.



Thanks again IFL!

 

Hey Guys, Long-Time, No-Read

I have been trying to work out how to create a world-space Triplanar UV shader with tiling control for something, but am having a lot of trouble with it.

For some reason the object appears almost burnt, so the normal map isn't being applied properly, but the Acegikmo Wiki only has examples using diffuse maps, no specialty maps like Normal or Metallic.

The idea of this is that I can duplicate concrete railings and walls along an area and alter the tiling amount to limit the amount of tiling data, without having to have unique UV's on everything, but this is turning out to be more complicated than following the wikis.

http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=World-Space_UV_Mapping
http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Triplanar_Mapping

 

Found the problem. The normalmap checkbox isn't ticked

 

Oops!
Missed that, thanks

 

np

 

There is a major bug in the current version of Shader Forge that prevents you from being able to scroll in the left side panel. As a result, you cannot access certain shader settings because they are out of view and there is no scroll bar.

 

hey, 2 questions, i want to know how to achieve a refractive color aberration? like the one water does on light wavelenghts? and also, is shader forge ever be multi-pass or what? thank you! @Acegikmo

 

Working on a 3d volumetric nebula shader with the same technique. This also recieves lights like the third example.

 

Fantastic work!

 

Hello!
It is possible to translate the script into the Shader Forge ?
https://gist.github.com/Kobusvdwalt/d74ad7013255d275a03817453dfbe28a

Any reserved names may be used in the shader forge for screen data (like _MainTex)?
I try to use _CameraDepthTexture, _CameraDepthNormalsTexture

 

Hi, I was just about to purchase Shader Forge with 25% off as part of the wishlist sale, but right when I was about to start the checkout process the discount suddenly disappeared? And if you check the Wishlist Sale, Shader Forge suddenly isn't there anymore, despite there still being three days left. What happened?

 

Would love to know, too, since I'm in the same boat.

 

Well, i've tried tweeting both the Unity Asset Store and Unity twitter accounts. I'll let you know if I get a response.

 

I'm in the same situation. In the end if they do not solve it ... we will end up buying the amplify shader

 

I am a noob and I have a question. How do I get the current color of any vertex?

 

Well, we're on the last day of the sale now and still no response from anyone as to why Shader Forge's sale ended three days earlier than it was supposed to.

I guess I won't be buying Shader Forge at this time.

 

You still have 18h left, I believe.

 

Same here. Everything else on the wishlist sale is still on sale except shader forge suddenly disappeared... Guess I won't be getting it this time

 

Very cool effect. This create by shader ?

 

Hi, I'm new to Shader Forge, so sorry if I'm asking a stupid question.
Anyway I want to create a shader that turns on a hidden texture when a certain spot light is lighting them and off when not - like a magical flash light. I would really appreciate any hint.

 

Yes, you can sort of do that.

The way to do it probably won't be a custom lighting model, or something that applies 'per-light' though.

Maybe have 2 worlds, the first being normal and the second being basically a mask. Use a render texture on a second camera, that only outputs where a light is shown, then use that as a mask in the main world for where to show a texture.

The other way to do it, is if you were OK to pass light values to all applicable materials. In the shader, you have access to world space of a pixel, and if you give the shader a vector 3 that's based off your light position, you can check to see if it's in range (point light). There's some more math you'd have to do for a spot light, but if you're ok with that and you can pass the light position and rotation to each material that needs it, it might be the faster way.

 

i managed to put together a frosted glass shader. based on the distance of objects behind the glass object get more or less blured. i want to have SSR on it. since i have to use deffered shader for that i can not use custom lit. there for i put my scenecolor with all its necessary operation into the base color. i do not get the desired SSR´s. as soon as i put a regular color in the very same shader with the very same settings they do appear.

any suggestions?

 

Have you tried plugging scene colour into any other outputs (emissive)? Also, when testing, maybe multiply the scene colour by 0.5 or a colour, and making the base colour something dark but reasonably saturated to try and see if there's any difference that comes up.

Also make sure your material roughness/metal/spec/gloss values are good for sowing SSR's.

 

Hello,

Just wanted to share.

Here's a script to remove meta pass automatically which is pretty annoying thing to do when you compile a post process shader and have to delete it manually.

how to use:

Just include this script into your project

You can also select which shader that you want to exclude from the stripping

via "Window/ShaderForge Meta Remover".



https://github.com/jackisgames/ShaderForgeMetaPassRemover

 

Hi, @Acegikmo why the unity's Global fog script does not catch any Shader forge's shader AT ALL ?? what can i do, not a single one of the shaders made in shader forge catch the fog from the "Global fog" script... any solution to this???

 

Hi gang, I've run into an error, where when I try to open SF it flashes a window and then writes these messages.
I don't know where to begin with this. I have tried downloading SF again and have restarted my machine and Unity as I read on another thread. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I just posted this same issue. Did you find a solution? @shrapnel92 @masarunuma

 

tried this and sevearal other things - cant get it to work. as i said as soon as i put a color instead of my custom input into the base get the desired effect. so what deferincites my rgb input from a standard color?

 

Hey people, i just made a tutorial check it out, subscribe and give a thumbs up if you liked it

 

Hi. I'm trying to do the math for calculating whether the point is inside of the cone, but fail to get hold of the cone's properties. There's nodes for light and point positions, but is there a way to access light cone's aperture and it's center bottom point. Or are they accessible by code only?

 

It'll be something where you attach a script to your spot light and it looks for the current spot angle, light distance, intensity, worldspace position, rotation, etc etc etc and passes that to a material. The material will need your shader that has appropriate inputs for those things.

 

I've done calculating the cone and thought that I already had it, but for some reason it doesn't replace the mask when point is not inside the cone. In Unity's script, where I do an approximation, it always calculates the isInsideCone correctly. Here's the picture:

The total mask is same size as the splatter image, but completely transparent. Any ideas?

 

Could anyone lead me to some help with this?

 

Hello everyone

Im trying to achieve a matte Shadow effect, i just want to mask the shadow projected on a surface and use it as transparency.

1-I alredy have the mask.

2-But if I connect the nodes to the "opacity clip" the sader crash
Console Error:
Shader error in 'MatteShadowMd': undeclared identifier 'attenuation' at line 64 (on d3d11)
Compiling Vertex program with DIRECTIONAL SHADOWS_OFF LIGHTMAP_OFF DIRLIGHTMAP_OFF DYNAMICLIGHTMAP_OFF

 

Just a heads up, looks like you're applying the reflection texture in the custom light section, so it'll be added for each light you have affecting the ocean.

For example, if you have 2 directional lights, the reflection of the skybox (or whatever is above and picked up by the mirror script) will be twice as bright.

Unless I've missed something here, the right place to plug that little section is into Emission.

Other than that, great work dude. Your method for controlling the water colour is an easier to use alternative than mine, though maybe a bit more expensive (hey, worth it). I was using light coefficient extinction values as a vector 3, and just raising it to the power of (depth behind water surface). But apart from plugging in known and correct values for water types, which is handled perfectly, it wasn't great fun to play with.

Other things to do is to clamp the (depth behind water surface) to a (max visibility) value. So instead of getting progressively darker, it just stops at the (water colour) value. Easy, simple, good looking.

 

Is there any way of rendering the wireframe of your model as a shader? No tricks like rendering out the wireframe in some 3D software and using a texture, preferably. I'd like to be able to make a shader that fades a model in starting with a wireframe much like how buildings were contructed in this game;

 

Sorry to spam the thread, but I'm looking for someone to extend the Unity Wiki Mirror Script. $20-35.
details: https://connect.unity.com/jobs/58d27a940909150021ce2d4e

If you, or anyone you know can do this, please help by sending them this way.

Basically it's a flip of the reflection camera matrix off the Unity Wiki Mirror Script.


It'll be for something shader forge related, I'm not giving away any clues as to what it might be for.

 

Is it possible to create an Anisotripic Shader in ShaderForge?

 

Yes. It's tricky though. It took me a while to work it out. I don't have my version anymore, but I think it was based on the shader guru @Farfarer's here, and specifically this function:

Code (CSharp):

1. float _AnisoOffset, _Cutoff;
2. inline fixed4 LightingAniso (SurfaceOutputAniso s, fixed3 lightDir, fixed3 viewDir, fixed atten)
3. {
4.    fixed3 h = normalize(normalize(lightDir) + normalize(viewDir));
5.    float NdotL = saturate(dot(s.Normal, lightDir));
6.  
7.    fixed HdotA = dot(normalize(s.Normal + s.AnisoDir.rgb), h);
8.    float aniso = max(0, sin(radians((HdotA + _AnisoOffset) * 180)));
9.  
10.    float spec = saturate(dot(s.Normal, h));
11.    spec = saturate(pow(lerp(spec, aniso, s.AnisoDir.a), s.Gloss * 128) * s.Specular);
12.  
13.    fixed4 c;
14.    c.rgb = ((s.Albedo * _LightColor0.rgb * NdotL) + (_LightColor0.rgb * spec)) * (atten * 2);
15.    c.a = 1;
16.    clip(s.Alpha - _Cutoff);
17.    return c;
18. }

To start, I think I used comments on my nodes for consistency in the variable relationships with the above function. So there was probably a Dot Product (Normalized instead of Standard mode) node with the comment "NdotL" and a Dot Product node with the comment "HdotA".
Hope this helps.

 

Thanks I'll check it out

 

Here's a quick shader doodle that I made despite having a ton of environment modeling to finish by tomorrow........

DNA Donut:

It's not actually rotating around a vertical axis - if you look at the base pairs you'll notice that it's rotating along the double helix with the center of the base pairs being stationary. It looks neat in VR.

Spoiler: Graph and mesh for anyone interested

The mesh is exactly 1x1x1, positioned at the world center on the X axis, and each end of the double helix aligns perfectly with the other.

 

Hi,

i'm learning shader forge and i have a question i would love some guidance with.

i need to create an interactive shader, think a water's surface that generates ripples when touched.
i'm able to create the graph that creates the ripples, but i'm not sure how to go about making it reactive and change the origin of the wave based on input.

 

Hello everyone,

Is there a way in Shader Forge where I'd be able to produce an animated Edge Glow like in the first 35 seconds of this video?
I've been trying hard looking, but couldn't find any tips to do it.

Thanks

 

Can shader forge create geometry shader?