Matcaps for Particles in Unity?

General Discussion
#1

I’m working on a blob/slime type NPC. The game has a stylized look that combines celshading and matcaps for fake reflections on some of the assets. Here’s what the NPC looks like:

I’m looking for a way to have a similar shading for my vfx, I can use some meshes that uses the same shader which is fine, but i’d also like to be able to use some errosion type billboards for some of the splashes and smaller details.

The problem i’m running into is that all reflections look the same regardless of the rotation of the billboard
Also, it seams like the view direction changes the way that the billboard is shaded

Here’s what my (very WIP) shader looks like:

image
image1920×761 77.3 KB

Does anyone knows of a way to use matcap shaders on billboards with normal maps?
Or any other way to fake stylzied reflections?

#2

I just noticed we can barely see the matcap reflection on the blobs on the first video, here’s a closer look.

#3

Ok so i found the solution, I had to pass the tangent custom vertex stream, the particle did not know which way it was getting rotated in which, in turn, made the normal map not work as intended :slight_smile:

image
image1920×565 61.9 KB

here’s the final matcap part of the shader

1 Like