pucklovesgames

Update about No Updates.

It's been quite a few months now with little to no updates. I'm sorry about that.

It's a combination of things, none of them individually overwhelming but all of them adding up to my inability to create new content.

I started this patreon as a way to help me fund and create my own game, with the idea being that I would share the assets from the game as I made them. But other commitments have shifted me away from self directed game development. Mostly I've taken on more contract wo...

Soft Area Lights - FILES

A small and simple little tweak to custom lighting on a shader. It ignores the normals near to the light source to create a soft bleed-through effect, like a directionless subsurface scattering. 

There's also a slightly hue shift towards the edges of the light radius to create a more interesting palette.

2022-02-08 02:11:32 +0000 UTC View Post

Interactive Waterfall - FILES

Here's an easy way to make an interactive waterfall, by rendering particles to a render texture via an orthographic projection that's aligned with the waterfall surface. These particles define the negative space part of the waterfall - the gaps created by the objects blocking the water.

It uses very basic collision with the waterfall volume, emitting particles at the centre of each collider. It also adjusts the particle size based on the collider size, which works well ...

DrawMeshInstancedIndirect - FILES

PSA: I'm not super familiar with any of this, so there might be incorrect assumptions and mistakes, if so, sorry, I'll correct them as I learn more!

I've been playing around with DrawMeshInstancedIndirect, which is like the souped-up version of DrawMeshInstance, in that it's not limited to 1023 instances per draw. It's a bit more complex and confusing, but I think it's worth the effort to get working, there's a lot you can do with a whole lot of instancing.

Using it r...

SDF Shader - Cutaway effect - FILES

Here's a little script and some shader functions that let you write out an object's transformation matrix and then read it as a Signed Distance Field (SDF) in a shader.

I've included 3 SDFs, a basic sphere, a rounded box with adjustable roundness, and a capsule. They can be freely moved, rotated and scaled.

I'm so thankful to the SDF examples by Inigo Quilez here:

http...

Quads to Billboards - FILES (Free)

I stumbled upon this really clever shader trick from Pontus Karlsson, where he pushes the verts of a quad mesh into camera facing billboards. You can watch the video of it here.

The benefit of it is that each 'billboard splat' retains the original normal, so you get proper volumetric lighting information without any extra work. You ...

Atmospheric Scattering Fog + Blur Masking - FILES

Here's a maskable blur effect that you can use in a variety of ways. It's done the same way the blur on the refractive rain shader (from here https://www.patreon.com/posts/rain-shader-with-32056295), by using a Command Buffer to grab the screen every frame, blur it, and then write it out as a global texture that can then be sampled in our shaders.

All the important components for this effec...

Environment Interaction Updated - FILES

This is pretty much the same as the previous Environment Interaction asset, now cleaned up, a bit easier to use, and updated with a few extra things that I've added in since I made the original.

The main visible addition is the grass swaying on the ground trail. The trail now wobbles between and outward push and an inward pull over time, which gives recently disturbed grass a swaying motion as you move through it.

The main 'cleaned up' part is the render texture is handle...

Interactive Ground Fog - FILES

I was recently reminded about the cool ground fog in Mario Odyssey by this tweet https://twitter.com/Patrickd3/status/1351245697845239809

I'd always wanted to give it a try, and then I realised I had the fx setup done already from the original Environment Interaction post, and more recently the Fog of War render texture post. So here's the Fog of War, without the Of War.

Just like the...

Fog of War via Render Texture - FILES

Repurposing the Environmental Interaction render texture camera to create a Fog of War effect.

The G channel is "full fog" (unexplored areas), and the R channel is "semi fog" (explored, but currently unobserved areas). You can mark areas as covered by the fog using the special Fog of War Quads that exist in the FogObjects layer.

The terrain shader samples from this to become desaturated and hidden in the fog areas, and the enemy shader samples from this to do a dissolve f...

Blood Steam using a particle ribbon - FILES

The in-built Particle Ribbons are pretty limited to create this effect, and a few workarounds have to be done to get it functional, but it works well enough for a quick one-off. To take it further I'd want to generate my own mesh, to allow the ribbon to split into multiple ribbons when the points are too far apart, to interpolate the line, and to have more control over the UV layout and keep a consistent mapping.

Magic Sword Particles - FILES

A simple way to make particles spawn on a weapon and leave a trail behind, plus a few fun particle shader variations for magic weapons - because sharp steel isn't deadly enough, it has to do elemental damage as well.

We want the weapon to leave a trail of particles behind when it's moved. But since you'd normally put the pivot point of a weapon at the handle, to make it line up easier for grab attachment, you won't be able to use the Rate Over Distance emission to spawn particles when t...

Bubble Popping - FILES (free)

Here's a fun little bubble popping shader that works on particles. Good for mud, lava, or other bubble forming liquids.

The bubble popping part is all done with opacity clip and vertex offset - I've made a quick toon-lite version as an example, but you can create your own colour variations depending on the bubble material you're after (or let me know what you'd like and I'll make it up for you - tis but the work of a moment).

I've used a sub emitting particle system for the 'poppi...

Render Texture Feedback - FILES

Ever since seeing the cool explosions in Remedy's Control, when you pop the "Hiss" off a possessed enemy, I've been wanting to play with adding more feedback build-up into my shaders.

Here is the my initial playing around with implementing a basic feedback loop that I put together a while ago, but never got around to completing. It's very bare bones, simply a second "feedback camera" that is rendering anything on the feedback layer to a literal quad in front of the main camera, which is...

Mesh Lights - WRITE UP

I wanted to go over some of the basics of how the mesh lights are put together, and some additions and fixes I've stumbled upon recently.

The above gif is from some lighting tests I'm doing for a project I'm working on that's going to probably be implementing these mesh lights. You can see a few more gifs in this thread https://twitter.com/Ed_dV/status/1321332232879943681

One of the thin...

The next few months of Patreon: Shaders to Swords.

Hello!

The type of content I’ll be producing for patreon will likely change over the next few months, from almost entirely (100%) shaders and effects, to other game assets, such as 3d models, textures and perhaps some animations too. Still with a focus on non-photorealistic and stylised aesthetics. I’d like to start creating more assets for my own personal game project which is based in a fantasy setting, so expect weapons, trees, castles and monsters 2020-10-26 07:13:33 +0000 UTC View Post