UI and masking 3d meshes in a scrollrect

So I am basically trying to do this http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/998203/mask-3d-objects-inside-ui-scrollrect.html....i have scrollrect with buttons and each button has a different 3d object on it to represent what the button do. But so far I have not been successful in masking out the 3d objects. I have messed around with render texture, but i have not found a good solution. I dont want to set up a stage where i film the 3d object in the right size and to project them on to the buttons with a render texture. Is there away to mask out the object with a shader? The objects i am using aare just using the standard shader, can i modify it to support stenciling ( dont have a full grasp on what stenciling is or does, I have just come across the term alot in my googling on the subject)

 

Thx for the answer, but i cant get it to work. TheMesh and Materials are never asigned with the objects mesh or materials. Do i have to add som code that refers to the current object?

something like

Code (CSharp):

1. Void Start(){
2. TheMesh = this.GetComponent<Meshfilter>().mesh;
3. }

 

But i could not get that to work either so i guess i am doing something wrong

 

So i created a empty game object, added yout script and then draged the mesh from assets folder and the materials from them on to i, but it still dont mask them. So i i am pretty lost here now

 

I think I just had a lightbulb moment on what that actually means @Tim C with the update to use meshes with the new UI.
Basically, any mesh would be hostable on a UI canvas, by either reading it's mesh data, or manipulating with with techniques such as the above. Interesting....
Looking forward to your shader update.

 

Im so freaking excited now! I havet been messing around with the standard shader, trying to add stenceling to it...but shaders is not my strong suite

 

Any news on this issue?

 

Did this ever get worked out? I've tried using the scripts in this thread along with using a UI shader, but no luck. Masking is ignored for a cube, for example, placed in the content area of a scrollrect.

 

Yo @Tim C any thoughts on the shader?
Just put a proposal in the UI Extensions project for this. Might whip up the basic control quickly myself using the above example, if you could provide your shader godness

 

Just realised as @Tim C has moved off the project, he might not be the right person to ask.
@phil-Unity any chance you can fill in the gap here as it seems a very useful approach?

 

Unfortunately at this time i'm not 100% sure let me talk with Tim and figure something out as i dont know what he had in mind for this.

 

Thanks @phil-Unity Eagerly waiting a response on this as it would be very useful.

 

Quick poke for the new year @phil-Unity any further thoughts on advancing this?
Tried a few combinations to manipulate / display the mesh but it does seem some shader magic is required.

 

Need to get a hold of Tim which didnt happen yet i'll poke him now but hes away till the 11th.

 

No worries, thanks for the update Phil

 

@phil-Unity

 

Happy new year team, any update on this request @phil-Unity ?
Hoping we can get through this quickly now in the new year as this would be an awesome boost to the UI system if we can get it working with the mesh data.

Did you manage to get hold of @Tim C 's brain and dissect his ideas ?

 

Well it's been a few months
Any update on the shader fix needed to make this possible? @phil-Unity / @Tim C

Did see (and comment) in this post which seems to indicate their approach works in worldspace but not screenspace, so wondered if it was related?
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/custom-mesh-rendering-under-ui-canvas.265700/

 

Hey so i got a shader from Tim thought not sure its been fully tested but i'm sure you guys will tell us if anything is wrong.

 

WhoooHooo @phil-Unity I'll give that a whirl. Thanks.
Will run this through the UI Extensions controls I had lined up for this and let you know. Thanks for chasing this down.

 

Anyone get this working with that shader? I think I am close... got the shader, applying to all mesh & shaders, still not masking tho.

 

Correction - it's working but in reverse... showing up outside the mask and not within it.... any thoughts?

 

@seansteezy Hi, how did you got it working (even in reverse)? Im stuck, canvas images just occlude the mesh

 

It seems to show up way below the rendering canvas, but I have my main cam, and UI is set to screen space camera, with the plane at 5. For each object in my menu (scroll rect -> grid layout -> menu item prefab -> ui -> 3d object), they have a modified mesh script attached (from the above) that will find one of the meshes in the child menu object and change its shader to the one provided above. While it doesn't look particularly good, it does show up outside the clipping mask, but doesn't show up within it, when that shader is applied to the game objects.

 

Yup same here, but can you please test to remove all clipping masks? I dont have any and still the images in canvas are occluding that mesh. So then the problem would be not clipping but mesh drawn too early? (Btw: when you set ZWrite On in shader the mesh will pop above, but still no clipping works)

 

That may be a z value or layer/cam clipping issue. I had probs with my camera near clipping plane, it was clipping my models, even though it was at 10 and the ui was at 0.

 

Code (CSharp):

1. Stencil
2. {
3.     Ref 1
4.     Comp LEqual
5.     Pass Keep
6.     ReadMask [_StencilReadMask]
7.     WriteMask [_StencilWriteMask]
8. }

This stencil settings solved the inversion problem for me . Hope it will help you too

Edit: Oh and i forgot you haveto set SubShader tags as

Code (CSharp):

1. Tags { "RenderType"="UI""Queue"="Transparent" }

 

How lucky am I? Finding this one day after it got figured out after almost a year.
Great job everyone, this should be part of next Unity update.



I attached everything you need to get this working. Remember to set the Canvas Render Mode to "Screen Space - Camera".

 

i can"t get this to work , sorry guys i'm an artist trying to learn programming , and i need to get this to work for my project ,
what i have is skinnedmesh , a character with some IDLE animation and turning around in a loop
i have done a small modification to the c# code in order to adapt it to the skinned mesh ,i have multiple materials on the character, i attache the UI3DMesh script to the Mask , when i try to change the size of the materials array, unity crashs ,

PS :i have applied the shader provided to all the sub materials of the skinned mesh

please help know if i'm doing this the right way
thanx

my modified script

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. [RequireComponent(typeof(CanvasRenderer))]
4. [ExecuteInEditMode]
5. public class UI3DMesh : MonoBehaviour
6. {
7.     public  Mesh TheMesh;
8.     public SkinnedMeshRenderer Frank;
9.     public List<Material> Materials;
10.     void ResetData ()
11.     {
12.         var cr = GetComponent<CanvasRenderer>();
13.         TheMesh= Frank.sharedMesh;
14.         cr.SetMesh (TheMesh);
15.         cr.materialCount = Materials.Count;
16.         for (int i = 0; i < Materials.Count; i++)
17.             cr.SetMaterial (Materials[i], i);
18.     }
19.     void OnEnable()
20.     {
21.         ResetData();
22.     }
23.     void OnValidate()
24.     {
25.         ResetData();
26.     }
27. }

 

Thanks for all the info that you've posted here guys! It's super helpful. I've modified the script slightly so that you don't need to constantly assign the script that was put up on here by Allen0012. All you need to do now is use the shader and material provided in Allen0012's zip file and place my modified script on a GameObject.

In the inspector you'll be able to see a list of MeshFilters on the script. Fill that up with all of the GameObjects/Meshes you want to hide in a Mask in Unity's UI and make sure that all of the GameObjects with the MeshFilters on have CanvasRenderer components too and are parented within a UI Canvas.

Here's the script:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. using System.Collections.Generic;
4. using System.Reflection;
5. using System.Linq;
6.  
7.  
8. // 3D Masking Original Script from:  https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ui-and-masking-3d-meshes-in-a-scrollrect.358475/
9. [ExecuteInEditMode]
10. public class UI3DMesh : MonoBehaviour
11. {
12.     public List <MeshFilter>    meshFilters = new List <MeshFilter> ();
13.  
14.     void ResetData ()
15.     {
16.         meshFilters.ForEach (delegate (MeshFilter meshFilter)
17.         {
18.             var cr = meshFilter.transform.GetComponent <CanvasRenderer> ();
19.             cr.SetMesh (meshFilter.sharedMesh);
20.  
21.             List <Material> materials = meshFilter.transform.GetComponent <Renderer> ().sharedMaterials.ToList ();
22.  
23.             for (int i = 0; i < materials.Count; i++)
24.             {
25.                 cr.materialCount = materials.Count;
26.                 cr.SetMaterial  (materials[i], i);
27.             }
28.         });
29.     }
30.  
31.     void OnEnable()
32.     {
33.         ResetData();
34.     }
35.  
36.     void OnValidate()
37.     {
38.         ResetData();
39.     }
40. }

 

Guys is it still been worked on ???

 

@TSLoire do you have an example scene with your approach. Doesn't seem to work or I'm not configuring it correctly

*Edit, ok, got a mesh renderering but with no materials and looks more like a shadow that a mesh.

*Edit 2, scratch that. You have to play with the new "Shader Channels" option on the canvas for it to recognise it properly. Scaling is awful though, as meshes in the canvas are scaled right down.

*Edit 3. Completely scratch that. Seems the UI Canvas system does indeed support 3D objects natively now and the script wasn't actually doing anything.

 

Hey Simon, did you get it fixed then? What version of Unity are you using? I think in the end I used a different approach, but it seemed to be working fine for me. If you still need a scene I can probably get you one at some point today. Is this kind of thing actually native to Unity?

Edit 1: It doesn't seem to work for me now. I'm not sure why... If you want I can take a look into it. I haven't worked on the project I was using it in for a while now, so it might take a bit of head scratching. I think I might have ended up just using the DepthMask shader to hide certain 3D elements when they went past a certain boundary and changed the RenderQueue value on meshes.

 

If you note from my last comment @TSLoire , 3D mesh rendering is not natively supported by the UI system (provided you enable a Light and use either SS-Camera or worldspace canvas.
Although, you may note the scale is really small on a worldspace canvas :S

 

I'm also interested!

 

HI @Allen0012, I can't get the sample you provided to work - do you happen to have the scene/project still? Trying to get this to work is the bane of my existence.

 

follow this question

 

I need this to work and it doesn't, i have a ScrollView on a SS Camera Canvas and the mask masks all the 2D elements but not my 3D objects.

 

Guys wouldn't be easier for you to just use tool like this? https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/109573
As I understood you are looking for GUI clipping solution for 3D objects, best with some UI depth support. If you don't want to buy something like this you can make custom shader which records to depth/culling mask elements in gui (it's easy because screen space position will be screen space position of your 3D object) and in another 3D mesh use shader which maps in world space the culling mask.You can look at guide below to see how it behaves (tool has just more options but basic version would look like as I described).

 

Hey Guys, I am the same issue but I add the Shader which is provided above. Masking is done but I face the issue is that this does not load the texture that's why my model show white color as shown in below image.
Thanks

 

Could you upgrade this shader to work in LWSP ?

 

Just tried this solution in Unity 2018.2.11 and it is not working( 3D mesh just becomes invisible. Can someone help?

 

We're trying to do the same but anything listed here isn't working at all. When the Stencil Read Mask is 255 the mesh is invisible, any value below that it is visible.
But the 3D mesh won't get masked by the UI mask or rect 2d mask.

Using Unity 2018.4.x LTS currently, any solutions?

 

Got this working, but the shader has different lighting as unlit/texture shader. - so any1 able to tell me how can I change the lighting in this shader to same as unlit/texture?

 

I may have found a quick solution to this by setting the 3D objects shader as the

TextMeshPro/Sprite

 

I know it's a bit late but, I managed to get it work but as you can see in the image, masked object is not like the original one. Shadows are not working. Can anyone identify the probem?

My shader code is here;

Code (CSharp):

1. Shader "Custom/NewSurfaceShader" {
2.     Properties {
3.         _Color ("Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
4.         _MainTex ("Albedo (RGB)", 2D) = "white" {}
5.         _Glossiness ("Smoothness", Range(0,1)) = 0.5
6.         _Metallic ("Metallic", Range(0,1)) = 0.0
7.  
8.  
9.         _StencilComp("Stencil Comparison", Float) = 8
10.         _Stencil("Stencil ID", Float) = 0
11.         _StencilOp("Stencil Operation", Float) = 0
12.         _StencilWriteMask("Stencil Write Mask", Float) = 255
13.         _StencilReadMask("Stencil Read Mask", Float) = 255
14.  
15.         _ColorMask("Color Mask", Float) = 15
16.  
17.         [Toggle(UNITY_UI_ALPHACLIP)] _UseUIAlphaClip("Use Alpha Clip", Float) = 0
18.     }
19.  
20.     SubShader
21.     {
22.         Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque""Queue"="Transparent"}
23.         LOD 200
24.         ZWrite On
25.         ZTest[unity_GUIZTestMode]
26.         Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
27.         ColorMask[_ColorMask]
28.  
29.        
30.         Stencil
31.         {
32.             Ref 1
33.             Comp LEqual
34.             Pass Keep
35.             ReadMask [_StencilReadMask]
36.             WriteMask [_StencilWriteMask]
37.         }
38.  
39.         CGPROGRAM
40.         // Physically based Standard lighting model, and enable shadows on all light types
41.         #pragma surface surf Standard vertex:vert fullforwardshadows
42.         // Use shader model 3.0 target, to get nicer looking lighting
43.         #pragma target 3.0
44.  
45.         #include "UnityUI.cginc"
46.            
47.         struct Input
48.         {
49.             float2 uv_MainTex;
50.             float4 worldPosition;
51.         };
52.  
53.         void vert(inout appdata_full v, out Input o)
54.         {
55.             UNITY_INITIALIZE_OUTPUT(Input, o);
56.             o.worldPosition = v.vertex;
57.         }
58.        
59.  
60.         sampler2D _MainTex;
61.         half _Glossiness;
62.         half _Metallic;
63.         fixed4 _Color;
64.         // float4 _ClipRect;
65.  
66.         void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutputStandard o) {
67.             // Albedo comes from a texture tinted by color
68.             // fixed4 c = tex2D (_MainTex, IN.uv_MainTex) * _Color;
69.             fixed4 c = _Color;
70.             o.Albedo = c.rgb;
71.             // Metallic and smoothness come from slider variables
72.             o.Metallic = _Metallic;
73.             o.Smoothness = _Glossiness;
74.             o.Alpha = c.a;
75.             // o.Alpha *= UnityGet2DClipping(IN.worldPosition.xy, _ClipRect);
76.            
77.             #ifdef UNITY_UI_ALPHACLIP
78.             clip(o.Alpha - 0.001);
79.             #endif
80.         }
81.         ENDCG
82.     }
83.     FallBack "Diffuse"
84. }

 

I've tried every solution here trying to get this to work with URP. Will Unity ever make this a default feature? I don't even know any good workarounds for this.

 

This is preposterous. 5 years of this thread and no stable solution exists. I've tried everything here (except using TMPro - i need custom shader).