Shader Forge - A visual, node-based shader editor

Sure. Set Blend mode to Off and disable auto-sort, configure it the same way as Opaque shaders, and it should work

 

That's what I was thinking! But you're not allowed to turn the blend mode off when there's something plugged into the alpha slot

 

Not even when unchecking auto-sort?

 

It doesn't look like it, all signs point to not being able to set the Blend Mode to Off unless I remove the connection to the Alpha slot. Another dilemma that I have is that currently only Deferred Pre-Pass shaders work with CandelaSSR, but that shader method in SF disables the Alpha. I don't need the transparency, just access to adjusting that alpha number to control the screen space effect.. Would Shader Forge ever accommodate for this?

 

It should, and it's definitely possible. Right now I'm in the middle of restructuring a lot of the code, so it may take a while

 

Well I'm in no rush, I just hope SF and Candela can play nicely together one day. Keep up the good work!

 

Hi Acegikmo,

Im the psvita debugger ( remember me? xD) like the UV problem with the variable name , finally i found another problem like that, this time with vertex colors. I had to change it to "Color" ( I was using the vertex colors as a diffuse texture ) but the name "Color" can be in conflict with other variables (maybe). Is very easy to fix, but I prefer to ask you if this is the correct way to do it.

 

Sorry could you go into a little more detail about masking the normal vector? If there's a graph on the wiki that does something similar I'd be happy to work it out from that.

This seems like the closest thing I can find

Bleh, i've rebuilt the shader linked to above, and then tried to morph it into what I need, but that hasn't really worked

 

I think your issue is related to this bug report:
http://shaderforge.userecho.com/topic/412056-default-alpha-to-zero-in-opaque-geometry-shader/

Simply vote it up so it stays in Joachim's focus

 

Hey, i'm going to make an ocean shader for a project.
So I'm pretty confident on how to implement it.
Although how would I do the vertex displacement? I.e get the wave effect sorta randomized? I was thinking of using a heightmap to determine the beginning vertex position of the ocean mesh and then run a simple sin(x) to increment the wave up and down from there.
Thanks

 

Hi,

I like to create a vertex color shader with detail map. What nodes should I be looking at? I don't need spec or bump, but I will need to color channel and I also need to do a diffuse version (diffuse shader with detail map).

I just want to confirm, shaders I create in shader forge can run on machines without shader forge...correct?

Thanks

 

There's a Vertex Color node inside the geometry tab section.
And you can use a Texture2D node from the properties tab section.
As it highly depends on how you want to apply the detail map to your mesh it is up to you to use the correct uv space. When using the Texture2D node without any modification it uses uv0 (texcoord0) as far as I know.
But you could easily use the secondary uv set or calculate your uvs inside the shader.
Lastly you can simply multiply the detail map with the vertex colors. Or you could try one of the many blend modes that come with the Blend node.

Correct.

 

Here is a fragment of a shader here, to use the uv2 coordinates to make individual polygons in a mesh billboard. Think a mesh with many grass polygons, that billboards for you.

Code (csharp):

1. v2f vert (appdata v)
2. {
3.     v2f o;
4.     //vertical billboarding
5.     float3 eyeVector = ObjSpaceViewDir( v.vertex );  
6.     float3 upVector = float3(0,1,0);
7.     float3 sideVector = normalize(cross(eyeVector,upVector));
8.     float3 finalposition = v.vertex;
9.     finalposition += (v.texcoord1.x) * sideVector;
10.  
11.     finalposition += (v.texcoord1.y) * upVector;

Here is how I tried to implement it in shaderforge:



When I attach it to the vertex offset, I get the pink ball and errors like this:
Program 'vert', unable to find compatible overloaded function "cross(error, float3)". My thought on that is, am I using ViewDir correctly?

 

I'm still fairly new to shader coding, so I'm not quite sure if this is doable:
Let's assume I've got a icosahedron (or something similar) and I want a shader which controls the color of the faces though a custom vector input, not by normals/tangents - so that let's say a specific face lights up with a certain color when an object is in front of it (and all others faces do not). Would this even be possible with a shader or do I have to make a model specially for this task?
(I'm assuming this could also be similar to the new faceted faces style where I simple have to split every face so that the normals aren't interpolated, but I'm uncertain.)
Thanks in advance.

 

Seems fine - are you using Beta 0.34?
(This wouldn't work in any version prior to it)

 

If you want that amount of control, you're most likely better off controlling individual faces from code rather than shaders, and send the color information into either the vertex colors of the face you want to modify the color of, or tweak material properties.

 

Yes, in a new project. And I don't know if it matters, but this is just within shaderforge. I haven't actually used it on a mesh yet.

 

Hi there!

Is there a way to make shadows go "full black" with shaderforge? I am looking for a visual style in which the shadows are fully black (ie. the shadows must not light up due to lights in the scene).

Cheers and thanks for your awesome product!

 

Sort of, yeah. Disable ambient lighting in the scene and make a custom lighting NdotL term followed by a ceiling function

 

Hi Joachim

Could you tell me when you will be introducing support for Amplify Textures?
http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-texture/

Shader Forge is a wonderful tool and I using it quite a lot but in combination with the unlimited textures which AT offer nothing short of a revolution in terms of new possibilities.

 

Thanks! but is there a way to make it work with multiple lights? In my scene there is one shadow casting directional light and several spotlight and omni lights. While the ceiling method works with one light, once there is more than one the shadow is light up

 

There's no specific timeframe for it, but it would be nice to have at some point!

In short - no.
Forward rendering is done in multiple render passes, one per light source, which means each pass can't access data from the previous or following passes.

 

Hi. I was just wondering, is there a way to limit the triplanar blend to not have the texture show up underneath the mesh?
I have a dust texture on the green channel blend input and the other diffuse on red and blue but the dust shows up on top and underneath.
http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=File:Triplanar_mapping.png

I used another method before with Normal Dir -> Comp Mask G -> Clamp 0-1 -> Round -> Lerp T. That worked better but left me with an hard edge instead. Do you know any good method for fixing this? Thanks!

 

Thanks a lot for the infos!

 

The layering depends on the order of the inputs, when you set it to layered rather than summed. Try switching them around

 

I recently purchased Shader Forge and I am loving it so far. What I originally needed was a detail map shader but I was unsure if any of the offerings on the asset store would offer me enough control so I decided to go with Shader Forge. After a few days of playing around I came up with this and it's almost making me feel like a professional shader author:

I have some thoughts and questions.

Is there a way to disconnect a node line other than link up a new node in it's place and then delete the node? Ideally I would like to be able to click + drag on the node input and while still holding the mouse button press delete.

A "Save As" or save incremental backup button in the shader editor would be nice.

Would it be possible to get some sort of ColorBuilder node that has 4 inputs for R,G,B,A? I know that I can use the Append operation to build a color out of the individual channels but that would require 4 nodes which can be a bit of screen estate when the shaders start getting complicated. I can also add a code node to do it but this seems like a fairly standard and useful function that others might want built in.

Do you have any plans for Unity5? The video from http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/05/19/teleporter-demo/ makes it sound like they are moving towards Deferred Rendering as the default option. Do you have any plans to integrate with the deferred rendering pipeline or will shader forge remain a forward renderer shader?

I played around briefly with the DX11 Tessellation/Displacement nodes - it took me a while to find your earlier posts/screenshots about how to hook those nodes up. It would be nice if that information was more easily available. Perhaps I'll add that to the wiki when I get a chance.

I was interested in experimenting with Phong Tessellation mentioned at the bottom of this article here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/SL-SurfaceShaderTessellation.html Is there a good way to do this entirely from within Shader Forge or will I need to manually edit the shader files? I'll admit I am not entirely sure what feeds into the DX11 Displacement node, can I cram vertex shader code node into that? Can I enable #Pragmas from within it? If I have to edit the shader code manually to add those features will I still be able to edit the shader with Shader Forge's editor afterwards?

 

Glad you like it!

There are three ways:
Alt+RMB click on a connector to disconnect it
Alt+RMB drag to draw a connection cut line
Backspace or delete while hovering a connector with the cursor

It would be a nice feature, I just haven't taken the time to implement it, because other things have priority at the moment. One issue is that I can't use the built-in shader dialogue, since it should ask what you want to rename the shader path to.

https://shaderforge.userecho.com/topic/376215-multi-input-append-node/

Since Beta 0.33, Shader Forge has supported deferred pre-pass rendering. But yes, the plan is to make SF be able to create shaders for the upcoming deferred rendering pipeline in Unity 5 as well

It would be great if you could add it to the Wiki

At the moment you need to edit shaders manually to do phong tessellation, which will make you unable to keep editing it with SF without overwriting the changes you entered into the shader. This is something I've planned to implement natively though, so you don't have to do it manually

 

Unfortunately that didnt work either, guess I have to rethink and see if I can find another way of solving it. Thanks away

 

Hey Ace

Do you have an idea what needs to be done to make candela SSR work ?
I really dont get it to work and I have no real idea what to do

here is what they write in their PDF

https://hostr.co/file/0xUPdUYBp4Gl/ssr.PNG

Do you understand that by chance ?

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/20...Unity/page22?p=1629934&viewfull=1#post1629934

at the moment you have to edit the shader outside SF to get shaders to work correctly with Candela - hopefully in the future both of these assets will work out methods to be more compatible

 

Wow - we now have switches and toggles, absolutely fantastic!

Am I right, that the shader will run faster when the switch uses a branch that needs less GPU/CPU-Power?

How can we access the switch/toogle by code?

 

They don't save computation power; they are still actively evaluated properties, not static branches.

Code (csharp):

1. material.SetFloat("_MyToggle", 1.0);

 

Ok, but deactivating a whole branch will result in a faster rendering shader or not?:

Look at the first node, setting it to "ON" will use one texture at all, so it will render faster - right?

 

Deactivating, as in, disconnecting something entirely in Shader Forge? Then yes.

 

Not in the case you've posted here. Both options are evaluated with the switch node; not one or the other; it's just syntax sugar, essentially.

If you want only one side to be evaluated, you'll have to wait for a node which does #ifdef for you.

 

Hey all, first off Shader Forge has blown my mind each time I play around with it so definite thumbs up to the author. But I ran into quite a serious problem today. I haven't changed anything and this problem has come up. I can see the shader in the preview but not in the scene? Has anyone ever experienced this problem before? I removed all assets in my scene, turned on and off lighting, changed type of lighting and still nothing. I am REALLY hoping to by pass this problem quickly, thanks a lot everyone.

http://postimg.org/image/hxtgib499/

 

I would guess you're using deferred lighting in your project/camera, but making a shader that's only supported in forward rendering

 

Hey Acegikmo,
Opening a compiled shader is broken with Unity 4.5, it looks like they changed the function signature.

 

This should now be fixed for the upcoming 0.35

 

Is there an estimated release date for this? I'm working on a Space Cowboy Game Jam entry and the deadline is a week and a half from now.

 

0.35 will take a long time. You'll be better of having two Unity installs, one for checking compiled shaders, and one for the project itself, in that case

 

I'll probably do that, yeah. It's just a bit of a mess since my HDD is getting mighty cramped these days.

 

I'm not sure of this, but since installing Unity 4.5 I can't see properties of any shaders/materials which are not done with shader forge. In fact, if I add the custom editor block to any existing shaders then those properties will start drawing, which makes me suspicious that SF is causing this. I might have to uninstall it from the project tonight to verify this..

 

Nope, full rebuild of the library fixed it - I think adding the SF editor fixing it was just a fluke..

 

Hi

I'm trying to get a nice ping-pong effect (so a float goes from 0 1 then 1 to 0) using noise and time. Currently, it reaches 1 then snaps back down to 0. I'm going to use this to move verts around nicely.

Any suggestions would be very helpful! In c# I'd do this with a modulo operator - can these be used in shaders?

Many thanks

 

You probably just want a triangle wave then. It's actually very simple thing to implement.

 

I have a small question, Is Shader Forge a physic based shading editor?

Thank you for your time.

 

You can choose the lighting type of your shaders. PBS is one of them. It is a wonderful thing.

 

The Wiki should help you out in this matter

http://acegikmo.com/shaderforge/wiki/index.php?title=Waveforms

 

haha, rtfm! thanks for the link