[UE4] Been working on an ice shader; looking for feedback
polycounter lvl 8
Edit: Final shader:
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Greetings polys, as the title says I want to improve on the following ice shader:
And here it is animated for clearer parallax and SS effects (apologies for the huge gif size):
I was trying to achieve convincing cracks in the ice and give it depth, this is my main reference:
I would really love some feedback to improve on this shader as it's my first time doing something more complicated than 3 texture samples plugged into their respective slots.
I'm also interested if this sort of thing is worth popping on the portfolio after it's done, or is it better to only have finished environments (this will probably be included in a scene... eventually)
I will now talk about the process I used, and I like to talk a lot, so feel free to skip the next reply if you're not interested, otherwise would love some notes on fixing/improving it.
TL;DR: Ice good ? how can better ?
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Greetings polys, as the title says I want to improve on the following ice shader:
And here it is animated for clearer parallax and SS effects (apologies for the huge gif size):
I was trying to achieve convincing cracks in the ice and give it depth, this is my main reference:
I would really love some feedback to improve on this shader as it's my first time doing something more complicated than 3 texture samples plugged into their respective slots.
I'm also interested if this sort of thing is worth popping on the portfolio after it's done, or is it better to only have finished environments (this will probably be included in a scene... eventually)
I will now talk about the process I used, and I like to talk a lot, so feel free to skip the next reply if you're not interested, otherwise would love some notes on fixing/improving it.
TL;DR: Ice good ? how can better ?
Replies
So the parallax is a custom parallax function (except that it isn't) that uses the crack map (exported from SD) to create a gradient depth mask that lightens and tints the ice under the cracks; so basically creates an "edge" for each crack "chunk".
I tried to use POM but it doesn't seem to support gradually fading the mask out, which helps sell the depth.
Also it's probably overkill, I could use fewer offsets, but I haven't done any optimising yet.
Offset noise is a basic texture with a bump offset to blocks SS in a fake-3D mask (needs some more work).
Everything else are scalar vectors to play around with the instances.
The substance graph is fairly simple, it basically serves a few purposes:
Colour variation; snow mask; crack and ice normals; and a basic roughness map
It's mostly used for the crack mask that's offset in Unreal.
I do realize it's not an impressive or complicated shader, I would just like some feedback to head in the right direction.
Cheers guys, love this community !
Thanks for the tip !
Look at you reference picture you can literally see the reflection of the mountains on the ice.
Furthermore, if it isn't making your material too complex I would add some large scale cracks that run continuously through the surface, that should help breaking the honeycomb pattern.
Other than that, it's the best ice I have seen in a while!
The ice is actually fairly reflective, the issue is that what it's reflecting is the clear blue sky, I suppose I should have worked on the presentation a bit more
Here it is with clearer SSR
Nonetheless, I amplified the specular highlights a bit and broke the honeycomb pattern as suggested
The chunks look more "glassy" now which is lovely
@PixelGoat I'll probably share this material somewhere once I clean it up a bit and make it more user friendly
Thanks again for the feedback !
Furthermore, I'd add a faint, noisy normal map to make the reflections less flat.
Starting to look a lot closer to the reference, what do you guys think ?
Maybe increase that normal map a bit, it still looks somewhat flat at a distance.
Can't wait to see the patches of snow breaking the shape!
Thank you guys so much for the help, I really appreciate it.
I really enjoyed working on this and I think it got better since I posted the first image with the feedback I got, so cheers for that.
I made the material available on gumroad to anyone who's interested in the technical side or if you want to use it in a scene or something, hopefully someone finds it useful.
I'll make sure to check the material out as soon as I get the time, thanks a lot for sharing it!
i'm almost sure you can simplify that a lot without losing any visual quality.
On the other hand, if the material editor had a for loop, the whole left side of the graph would be 3 nodes, as it's iterating the same process
but if you think there is room for improvement, go go go!