[RELEASE] Shader Forge - A node-based shader editor for Unity
Hello!
I've been working on a shader editor for a couple of weeks now, which is starting to shape up quite neatly
The goal with Shader Forge is to provide an intuitive and visual way of creating shaders in the Unity engine, just like the Material Editor in UDK.
Shader Forge is now finally live on the Unity asset store!
Here's a list of all nodes
Since most of you are artists here - What features would you like to see in this editor?
And if you've used a shader/material editor before, what did you like/dislike about them, that Shader Forge can do better?
I'd love to hear any feature requests you might have to make this as nice as possible for you all
Also, Twitter, if you're into that stuff.
Click here for a feature/node/todo list!
Alpha/Beta signups are now closed!
This is due to having a ton of testers, and the fact that SF is hitting beta very soon!
I will put up SF on the asset store when it's in the beta, during which you'll be able to get a license for a cheaper price than the full $100 at release. Exciting times
Anyhow, here's how it currently looks (and works):
I've been working on a shader editor for a couple of weeks now, which is starting to shape up quite neatly
The goal with Shader Forge is to provide an intuitive and visual way of creating shaders in the Unity engine, just like the Material Editor in UDK.
Shader Forge is now finally live on the Unity asset store!
Here's a list of all nodes
Since most of you are artists here - What features would you like to see in this editor?
And if you've used a shader/material editor before, what did you like/dislike about them, that Shader Forge can do better?
I'd love to hear any feature requests you might have to make this as nice as possible for you all
Also, Twitter, if you're into that stuff.
Click here for a feature/node/todo list!
Alpha/Beta signups are now closed!
This is due to having a ton of testers, and the fact that SF is hitting beta very soon!
I will put up SF on the asset store when it's in the beta, during which you'll be able to get a license for a cheaper price than the full $100 at release. Exciting times
Anyhow, here's how it currently looks (and works):
Replies
I've been looking for another option to the other node based editors for unity. the one thing that no one has right now is nodes that you can plugin a lighting model. specifically nodes that use the recently exposed params of skyshops pretty IBL
Do that and I would flip out!
Normal map blending is super common, so yes, there should be a node for that! A multiply by two node could be useful as well, or just a smaller version of a vector/float/value, so the 2 doesn't take up as much space (As it's pretty much always just a solid color anyhow)
Just recently i have had issues setting up panning textures using strumpy, how does UV manipulation work at the moment? Do you have access to panners and rotators without having an external script running?
Would also see materials accessing the light vector like in your example.
Good luck mate!
Unity needs this officially.
Another suggestion is color coding the connection curves. It can sometimes get crazy with all same kind of lines going everywhere. Vector/scalar values could have colors applied according to their number of components etc. Maybe texture connections could have another color etc. It would make it easier to trace back your network when you make mistakes.
Do you mind telling if we would be able to have access to the Light Vector node? From what I gathered, Unity, due to it's renderer issues with the old Strumpy Editor couldn't 'allow' the Light Code to be exposed, and had to be written manually by hand if you wanted it, will this editor have the same issues, or did you find a magic solution to it?
Also, what ways do you plan on implement to keep the material clean? UDK for example allows reference group nodes, there are some other applications which allow for you to 'collapse' stacks of nodes into small group/folder like node, to keep things from getting messy, any plans for such features?
Any plans to implement a Code node a la UDK that is just as simple to use? Or will people need to learn Unity-related-clean-code to implement their own shader specific code (Eulars, ATan, etc)?
Lastly, is it going to be open-source/free or will there be an entry fee on it?
Still, this is bloody great! Subscribed to thread.
Nice to haves:
* Panner node with either the x or Y input shown, so you can scroll the UV in either direction, with a time node. Also the ability to add a constant or range node to control the speed.
* Ability to export the shader to a file. with the option to choose whether its dx9, dx11, or mobile
* tessellation option for dx11, range slider input to control the tessellation.
* support for additive materials for particles or other particle materials
if your looking for testers, I'd be happy to help
(I have a team of 20 I am currently in the process of Hiring for. So this will be great on our project
There will be a panner node! However, you can do it "manually" as well
(There's no time node yet, but there will be)
Light vector is planned too!
Great job btw. I would totally pay a good amount of money if you support mobile and get it to show clean code after the fact.
Mobile is definitely going to be supported! As you can see in the screenshot, there are several different lighting modes.
For mobile, you'll want either vertex lit or simply unlit.
The goal is to provide as much control as possible for things like this.
For example, you'll be able to switch certain light types on and off, in case you're not using them in your scene:
Directional lights, Point lights, Spot lights, Ambient light
I'm not sure if it's possible to specifically say where the limit goes, especially with all the different devices out there. That said, showing instruction count should be possible
I presume you mean some thing like:
Vertex: 40 instructions
Fragment: 35 instructions, 3 texture lookups
With a dropdown box to display different target platforms (d3d9/opengl/gles/flash etc)
Looks really promising
I've planned to write an extensive documentation on this, and integrate it into the editor
At the very least; link to the docs from the editor itself!
I'm glad it looks promising!
You would have to make super direct linking to make this work. Like right click on a node with a dropdown menu, and have the link open the doc on the proper page.
Very likely 2 lines of text each is helping a lot more people than a excessive explanation, also all these things are very findable on the internet and known from other editors if you need the detail, often less is more = also less work for you
Yeah, tooltips would be a good thing! It'll have to wait until it's nearing completion though, as they can easily be subject to change in this early stage.
Done!
The component count is now visualized through the number/thickness of lines.
Having color coded lines might become a bit too cluttered. I think this solution looks pretty neat though. What do you think?
Also, I added a normal quality toggle as well, so you have more control over how expensive your shader will be.
Especially useful on low-end devices.
As unity user, i would love to test it, we might need a tool like this in our little company.
My only concern would be about optimization for mobile, you said you'll support mobile but how far ? Would it be benefit to use your tool instead of coding a shader from scratch ?
UV Panning as mentioned earlier, rotation would be great too.
The goal is to make it viable for mobile shader creation as well, but it's all up to the person creating the shader
Disable lights, disable specular, or even lighting altogether, and you'll see that the shader you get out of it is most likely fit for mobile usage!
I'll most likely implement an optimization mode, where you can assign precision to specific nodes, making it even cheaper.
Those are all planned
Which nodes would you want for that feature specifically; apart from time, sin/cos/tan/smooth/clamp/wrap/repeat ?
For the docs, have a way to also go to a wiki website for the nodes, so people can like share tips'n'tricks for using them:
i.e. fresnel for water, here are some common examples
here's how to make a simple cel-shader, etc.
I'm sure there are examples to be found online for maya or ue3's material editors, which one can replicate for Unity, but still would be nice to have it collected in one place.
Instruction count: Yay! That was fast!
Reason being: as a TA that has worked on some UE3 projects, some artists didn't quite understand the need for keeping the shader efficient and understood how to keep it optimized. So some way to impose a warning or outright block over a certain number would be nice.
Or if one wanted to be nefarious, have a hidden email to alert someone that a user made a 100+ instruction shader for an eyeball or something.
Oh! From a maintenance point of view, a shader summary might be nice, searching the whole project tree for the assets and listing out stats. Might not be applicable for this tool though.
Click here to open the Shader Forge feature/node/todo list
Sounds like a pretty good idea! A settings file will come, so there could be a setting for a soft and hard limit for both the vertex and fragment program.
Soft limit will warn users, hard limits will not allow you to go over them. The instruction count could show up in yellow if it's over the soft limit, and red if it's over the hard limit.
Alpha is not supported yet though, but it's on the todo list
I think it might be in some form of Alpha state in about two weeks
It depends on how many unexpected issues I run into along the way. So far is has been smooth though!
You now have control over face culling and depth sorting. Also, the component lines are now uniformly spaced
some shaders I use when making mobile games in unity require these things:
diffuse, specular, cubemap reflections, normal maps, scrolling and rotating of uvs, multiple uv channels - detail texture using a second uv channel, masking specular with vertex colour, using vertex colour alpha, giving an alpha sorting priority to a shader eg so that particle glows are on top of the explosion, set whether the shader is effected by fog, turn on and off zdepth testing, maybe the ability to play flipbook/spritesheet animations, also using vertex colour to blend between a few textures .
at the moment my workmate makes all these shaders for me and I have to bug him a lot! it would be great to be able to make some of them myself with this editor!
I will design it to work primarily in Unity 4.x, but I'm not sure if I'll use anything in it that will break in 3.x.
If it actually does break though, I'll try to make sure it works in 3.x as well
An Alpha should be ready in about two weeks, I would guess! It depends on how many unforseen issues that pop up along the way
Is it possible to 'snap' the nodes? To make them align nicely with eachother. And also, is it possible to zoom in/out?
Thanks!
Which type of alignment would you like? A grid in the background, or relative snapping when they are in-line with neighboring nodes? (Or both?)
Zooming is definitely planned, I should add that to the todo list
Sure! I can't guarantee the code it generates will look nice, but we'll see
Some of my suggestions include:
-Transmission mask and colour working like in UDK (with lightmaps)
-Being able to map Sines to worldspace UVs
-WorldSpace UVs
-Triplanar UV mapping for terrain and other stuff
-Ability to make custom terrain shaders! (easy nodes for layers etc)
-Support for a modulated blend mode
-Depth biased blending node (so useful for many things)
-Vertex normal node for WorldPoaitionOffset
-Possibility to displace vertex in realtime via a texture? (not possible in UDK, but could be very useful!)
-LIGHT VECTOR!
-Change "vector" to "constant vector" (i.e "constant 3 vector", etc)
That's all that I can think of at the moment, please don't abandon this project!
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Relative snapping when they are in-line sound very nice. But if snapping them to a grid is faster / less of a hazzle for you to program that would do the trick too
I'm looking forward to it. Any ideas on the price already?
Im using strumpy and hand writing shaders for a project im currently doing and its making me cry slightly with results I can do easily in unreal.