pucklovesgames

Tier tweaking

Hi everybody,

I've tweaked the tiers a bit, dropping all the higher tiers, which were unoccupied anyway, and consolidating their benefits down into the lower tiers.

The biggest change however is in clarifying that the $1 tier is mostly just about support, and removing any exclusive content or early access promises associated with that tier. I don't like locking tutorials and information behind this (admittedly small) paywall, and sharing them freely is also a good way to reach mor...

2d Raymarched Smoke FILES

Hi everybody,

I've been using UV offset by light direction in shaders for a while (most notably in the volumetric clouds shader), but I realised I never put together a simple raymarched smoke shader before, so here's one that you can play with and take apart.

It uses 2 shadow passes and 2 light passes, and blends between them based on the View dot Light Direction. VdotL outputs a gradient between -1 and 1, with -1 being when the light is perfectly behind the  smoke, 1 being w...

Environment Interaction - Updated FILES

I've made some tweaks to the Environment Interaction system, so here are the updated files!

The biggest change is now grass/foliage interaction happens in the R and G channels, to define a 2d direction, so you can now push grass out of the way, and it could also be used to bend larger plants..

Water ripples are still in the B channel.

Mud (and squashed grass) is now in the A channel.

I'm now defining 0.5 as the midpoint for any channel, and then in shader remapping it ...

Toon Fire Shader in Unity

The Write up is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/toon-fire-write-22032503

The source files are here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/toon-fire-files-21988132

One Layer Clouds - FILES.

Here are the source files for the 1 Layer Clouds.

As always, let me know if there are any issues with the files, or improvements/suggestions on how to make it better. I have a feeling I'll be continuously revisiting and improving this approach in the future - clouds are just such a beautiful phenomenon in nature, and attempting to capture that in a real time shader is a real pleasure.

Thanks so much for all the support. I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas, and I'm looking forwa...

Fake Volume Clouds in 1 layer, without crazy overdraw!

While the previous volumetric clouds could look pretty good, I was never happy with how many stacked layers were required to get a decent effect, causing a huge amount of overdraw. So I've tried to make a 'one layer' version that exists all on a single quad and avoids the crazy overdraw issues altogether. While it's obviously going to look flatter than the quad stack, I think it still does a reasonable job of simulating fluffy, three dimensional clouds.

The clouds are made with...

Environment Interaction via RenderTexture FILES

Here are the Unity files for a cool approach to generate visual environmental interactions, like water ripples and mud/snow trails. It uses a top-down camera to draw a bunch of particles to a global render texture, which is then referenced in any shader that wants to implement any of these effects.

I'm drawing blue water ripples (so the water shader just uses the B channel) and green mud trails (so the ground shader uses the G channel). The shaders then use that to generate a normal texture. I...

Half Tone Shader (image effect and per object) Files

I'm back from my trip, and getting back into Shader Shenanigans again!

Here's a simple Half Tone shader, in both an image effect variation (toggle the image effects on an off on the camera scripts) and a per object variation (the sphere in the middle).

The image effect comes in two varieties, one to override the screen colours, and one to maintain the hue and saturation, and just do the value as halftone.

2018-11-08 13:08:39 +0000 UTC View Post

Toon Fire Write-up

If you haven't yet watched the video detailing the creation of this shader, you can watch it right here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/24140440 

Source files for source file patreons are available here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/toon-fire-files-21988132

This effect ...

Toon Fire Files

Here are the files for the incoming Toon Fire tutorial. Have a poke around and see how it's put together! Any question, hit me up in the comments or in Discord.

Edit: Added a 2017 version, in case you're using an older version of Unity and the prefab update broken anything for you. (grab "ToonFire_02_Unity2017.unitypackage" instead)

Toon Fire Incoming and schedule update

Here's a sneak peek of the next video tutorial, where I'll make some simple, classic, Toon Fire.

In terms of release schedule, I think it would probably be better to push out the files and write-up before the video, because that's stuff I usually have ready in advance compared to the video, which takes a while longer to make. And since the video is free and the other stuff is for Patrons, it makes sense that it should be out earlier right?

So the Toon Fire writeup and files should be up ...

Work in Progress Updates

Here are some things I've been working on:

Up above you can see that the Subsurface Scattering rim mask (faking spherical normals to limit the effect to the outside edge of the mesh) that worked for foliage, also works for hair and faces - it basically just keeps the inner area of a mesh dark - so anything sticking out will get SSS. So red ears and hair highlights!

I've also been playing with Li...

Volumetric Clouds Write-up

If you haven't yet watched the video detailing the creation of this shader, you can view it here: Volumetric Clouds in Unity. 

The basis of this effect is drawing a vertical stack of quads, each one showing a slice of the cloud. The cloud texture itself is just a world-mapped, top-down animated noise that is piped into opacity.

2018-09-26 02:23:17 +0000 UTC View Post

Optimised 3d noise Volume Clouds, for VR... ?

Using the pre-modelled quad stack, which may work better in VR, here is the shader as optimised as I can think to make it while still keeping it soft edged.

Quick Ghost Shader

 I knocked together a quick ghost shader with some fresnel rim light and refraction. Also vertex wobble and a up and down bobbing done in shader.  I'll do a proper write up soon (and the Volumetric Clouds write up is still incoming!). There is a bloom image effect on this gif, but no lights - the interior lighting is baked into the model with a vertex colour mask.

Here's the bob for now - just a sin wave by time, zeroed out in the X and Z axis (so it only goes up and down), and then ...

Ghost Shader Files

The files for the Ghost Shader. Yes, it even includes the teapot.

This was a quick shader, so let me know if there's anything missing or poorly put together. Thanks.

Need more performant clouds?

Here are the Volume clouds - super lite version. This is with the directional light completely stripped out, which makes it MUCH more performant - and it's not really noticeable is it? 90% of the effect is carried by the ambient and SSS contributions. The SSS gives a general impression of the light direction, and the ambient creates the top down shading which gives the clouds their volume.

So if you require more performance, try stripping out the directional light contribution completely.

Volumetric Clouds Lite

Here's a version of the shader with a bunch of unnecessary additions stripped away, to make it as light as possible while still retaining the same basic look - the only way to make it more performant, as far as I know, is to limit it to Opacity Mask and turn off Alpha-Blend, which would only work if you're going for more stylised clouds. With a small enough cloud height, it gets away with only drawing 10 la...

Volumetric Clouds Source Files

Here are the files I used in the Volumetric Clouds video. (Everything is included in the unitypackage OR zip file, the individual files aren't needed if you've already grabbed one of those).

If you haven't seen the video yet, you can watch it here: Volumetric Clouds in Unity 

There are a LOT of ways to optimise these shaders - for example, if you know you're going to stay u...

Volumetric Clouds in Unity

Tier adjustment. $5+ gets file access!

Since this Patreon is super new, it's still in flux as I figure out the best way to set up tiers and rewards.

So I'm making the tiers more generous:

$10 for access to the source files felt too high, so I've dropped file access down to anybody supporting at $5 or above.

The write-ups and further information will also now be available to anybody at the $1 tier or above. More for everyone!

So have at them!

2018-09-11 22:30:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Lit Volumetric Clouds incoming

This is a big topic, so I might have to break it down into two separate videos. One detailing how to generate 3d volumetric clouds, and a second video on how to fake the lighting. I hope to be done with part 1 in the next week.

Animated Candle Flame Source Files

 Here are the source files for the Animated Candle Flame shader.

There is the adjustable 3 colour Candle Flame shader, as well as an optimised version that just uses a standard texture.

I've also included the SSS shader for the candle, as well as a more optimised version that doesn't require a point light and fakes SSS lighting by adding in pre-baked vertex colours on the candle mesh.

Animated Candle Flame write-up

If you haven't yet watched the video detailing the creation of this shader, you can view it here: Animated Candle Flame Shader in Unity.

To have control over the colours of the candle flame, we split a texture up into separate RGBA channels, using Channel Mixer Adjustment layers in...

Animated Candle Flame Shader in Unity

Subsurface Scattering write-up Part 2: Foliage Shader

 If you haven't yet watched the video on this shader, you can view it here: Subsurface Scattering for Foliage (without raytracing) 

If we apply the Subsurface Scattering shader we made before to foliage geometry, we see that the parts of the shader that rely on sur...

Subsurface Scattering files

Here are the source files for the Subsurface Scattering shaders.

UPDATE: If you're not interested in stylised toony shaders for SSS and just want to have it added to the standard PBR shader, then Amplify has you covered with a built in Translucency input. Thank you Amplify! I've added a PBR Metallic shader with SSS if you'd like to see how that's hooked up (PBR_SSS_01_Unity2019.1.1f1...

Subsurface Scattering write-up Part 1: Base Shader

(SSSS? Subsurface Scattering Skeletons!)

If you haven't yet watched the video on this shader, you can view it here: Subsurface Scattering for Foliage (without raytracing) 

There are two parts to this subsurface scattering shader. The first part makes light glow through a ...

Subsurface Scattering for Foliage (without Raytracing!)