SmearKees VFX Adventure

[SmearKees]

Because I know minimal about vertex offset and how it works I googled on internet, and watched tutorials and was reading what every node means on ShaderForge there website. This is the outcome when I use the offset on a sphere. The vertices are not connected to each other, does this has to do something with normal maps?

This is the shader itself, right now I’m figuring out how to create the “beam pulses” with the vertex offset.

If somebody has a shader that can show the major steps I need would be amazing if I could take a look into this

[Travis]

Brows through this thread real quick and see if the solution they came up with works for you

Need help for vertex offset

The first example of the generic long/lat sphere has issues at the poles due to the points there inherently having mismatched UVs. Here’s the default UVs created by 3ds Max on a sphere. [image] As you can see across the top and bottom, the UVs are in a saw tooth pattern. Each of those points are thus sampling a different point in the texture, thus will be offset by a different amount. One option is to weld the UVs across the top, like this: [image] The result is now all of the vertices at t…

[SmearKees]

Awesome travis, thanks for the link! I’ll check out how the uv’s are in blender

[SmearKees]

Instead of running stuck on one effect I tend to always learn alot from doing different aspects. So I’m also watching the videos from Sirhaian’Arts his Unity VFX tutorials, and here’s my take on the sparks tutorial. The sparks with some adjustments could also be a nice add-on for the beam effect to give the impact more power

[Asuran]

His tutorials very helpful) But some of them are too old. Like with black hole he used wind zone but you can use velocity over time) And some videos using Shader Forge and it is always doesn’t work properly (for me)), always some errors and at the end i was making crystal reflections and it was ruined by shader forge errors((( I downloaded it from github but i hope some day i will buy amplify shader) Nice sparks!

[Dom]

If you are using a cube which has flat shading (split normals), the normal offset is steering each face into a different direction. You need unified normals (smooth shading) to keep the surface in one piece.
Wow, just gives me the idea to make a tearing cloth effect based on normals blending from smooth to flat (wondering how to do that)

Here some Smoothing Groups ref:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Smoothing_Groups

[SmearKees]

started with a projectile

[SmearKees]

Awesome, thanks alot :D. I need to educate myself alot more on these kind of subjects !

[Dom]

No worries. Yeah, you can also just keep going and tapping in those traps will teach a lot. =)

[SmearKees]

Still alot of nice stuff to learn from :D, I never checked out amplify shader. Is amplify shader a better and more updated version of shader forge?

[boorch]

I mostly prefer ASE since I guess it’s a bit faster to work with (not in terms of performance, but in terms of UX/UI) I just press space and type the node name to add that node to the graph. And “shader functions” is super useful so I can create custom nodes for the stuff I use most of the time. For example, I’ve created shader functions for various kinds of gradients and shapes and that’s super handy. I like my schematics super clean and I don’t want to place 4-5 nodes whenever I need an angular gradient etc.

And the most important feature of ASE for me is, the graph window is SUPER fast. You can zomm in-out and pan like surfing through clouds. A fast graph window is I guess the most important feature of ANY node based tool.

IMHO the only thing Shader Forge is better at is the vast amount of online content such as tutorials and sources created by its community. I’ve started shader development by examining Shader Forge schematics and reconstructing them in ASE.