Thank you for the reply, Ben. I'm happy to help support this amazing channel. You're a real pro at this, man. Your videos help me a lot to get a better understanding of the whole rendering process. Thanks for that.
I've been using shaders in Unity for over a year now having come from Unreal, I'm no master at shaders but I've found Unity to be very good for vertex animations and shaders in general, having custom block nodes in the vertex shader is really powerful!
I’m curious, do Unity and unreal automatically recalculate normals when you offset vertices? I was kinda expecting this to get into adjusting the normals along the wave
Neither engine recalculates the normals. I didn't go over it to keep the video short - and in the places where I've used this shader it wasn't really needed so I left it out to keep the shader cheaper. But it is possible to do. Maybe I'll cover that in my next video.
@@BenClowardYes! Recalculating normals sounds like a very good topic, great idea. That is a reoccuring problem in vertex shaders which is unfortunately often ignored. And you need it in so many cases, flags, waves, any time you don't offset in the normal direction.
I forgot to mention in the video that in order for this to work, the pivot point of your flag mesh needs to be on the side of the mesh where the flag pole will be. So that could be the problem you're having?
Hello, is it possible to have a tutorial for Decal Material? I want spawn decal on the ground when the grenade or barrel explodes, but when it's near the wall the part on the ground is correct but the part on the wall is blurry and messed up and warp.(Also to spawn blood on the surface) I looked for a way, but my problem was not solved. Thanks for your help
When using a sine wave for animation, recalculating the normal vector is trivial because the derivative of sin(x) is cos(x), and the derivative (slope) of a curve is perpendicular to the normal vector. Plug the same input going into your sine wave into cosine to find the tangent, then rotate it 90 degrees (Y, -X) to find the normal.
Is there certain settins the material should be in terms of Material Domain, Blend Mode, Shadeing Model? I plugged everything in how your have shown in UE5 and my shader is very sharp and blown out
For me, it just slides back and forth in Unreal 5.2. Using a TexCoord instead of LocalPosition helped make the texture look wavy, but either way the geometry stays flat and slides back and forth.
@@robinj6997 yeah, as I mentioned, I tried a TexCoord, and it made the texture look wavy but the geo moved in a sliding position despite its rotation. I just used cloth in the end. Thanks though.
Ben, thank you for everything that you're doing! Speaking of shader "expensiveness". If it's possible, can you one day make a video on technical explanation about how things work, please? What influence what, which is the task for GPU, which is for CPU, how to measure and interpret the shader performance, which tools are more and which are less expensive, what is better to use on mobile platforms, and what is should be considered as computer/console only, etc.? I can even try to help you with this if needed, in terms of running tests, editing the video, audio or other tasks 😊 My point is to collect everything you teach us in one video. Because you have mentioned about this aspects here and there in different videos many times. But it would be amazing to have something like a handbook, where you can always return and realize, where and how you can optimize your particular work. I might need mistaken, but I guess it will be extremely useful for many of us. Thanks!
Great video! Is there a way to apply some “drag” to the flag so it could be placed on a moving object? I imagine waving the flag back and forth would cause the vertices to sort of lag behind and create that effect. I tried multiplying their positions by world space, but to no luck. I think I need the work space in the last frame. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
You might need to add a c# component to the object too which pre-calculates and sends values like last frame's position to the material. But with that, very doable.
@@fleity Right, that would probably do it. I am experimenting with a more simple solution by inputting world space into the UVs, so when the object moves through the world the cloth kind of flutters more or less depending on its speed. It sort of simulates a dynamic movement effect without the C# component giving it something each frame. Of course it won't work for a real flag, but for character clothing it seems to do the trick.
@@darkmattergamesofficial you surely can make something which looks plausible-ish enough to work that way, but the stateless nature of shaders kind of prevent you from getting any kind of overlap from a previous position to the current state. Yes World space position uvs and a noise texture or function give you some motion but you probably can't build up and scale down the effect when the player stops moving and you have trouble getting a good direction. In this case the extra step is probably worth it :)
@@fleity Very true. I will mess around with it a bit and see if I can make a stateless system look convincing, but at the end of the day there is that hard limitation where a C# script is the only way forward. I also though about faking some physics on solid objects. For example if you wanted to attach a pouch to a character's belt and have it rotate to match the pull of gravity, like it was suspended somehow. That could work in a shader, but you may only be able to get a locked effect, it wouldn't sway with physics.
After going through this for Unity, when adding the negate and saturate, half of my flag is immobile while the other half is moving normally. Any idea where I went wrong? Thanks
You need to make sure that the pivot point for your mesh is on the side where the flag would attach to the pole instead of in the middle. I think that’s what your problem might be.
Impressive demonstration! Can Unity, using shaders, emulate features from traditional 3D software like Blender or Maya? For instance, can it replicate the bend modifier from 3ds Max? If so, to what degree? Are there limitations or inefficiencies in Unity compared to these 3D packages? My challenge has always been transferring procedural objects with their functions from 3D software to Unity to interact in real-time with features like rigidbody. Would appreciate your insight, my diplomawork centers around this.
@@BenCloward so I found that - for whatever reason - if I made the same simple quad in Blender, it works. It seemed like my version of Unreal 5, the modelling tools were doing something that didn’t place nicely with this approach.
I forgot to mention in the video that in order for this to work, the pivot point of your flag mesh needs to be on the side of the mesh where the flag pole will be. So that could be the problem you're having?
@@ovrava It sounds like you just have a plane that has fewer polygons than the one I'm using. You can reduce the edginess either by increasing the wavelength of your wave or by using a flag mesh that has more polygons.
![World Position | 5-Minute Materials [UE4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/87sRQ8fD1dY/mqdefault.jpg)
Thank you
I really appreciate your support for the channel. This will go directly to helping me pay for the software and hardware I use to make the videos.
Thank you for the reply, Ben. I'm happy to help support this amazing channel. You're a real pro at this, man. Your videos help me a lot to get a better understanding of the whole rendering process. Thanks for that.
Thanks for these videos. They helped me understand shaders so much better than any documentation.
I've been using shaders in Unity for over a year now having come from Unreal, I'm no master at shaders but I've found Unity to be very good for vertex animations and shaders in general, having custom block nodes in the vertex shader is really powerful!
First few minutes of the video make me excited to check out the last video! :D
Thank you very much. This should help a lot of people!
Simple and effective ... thanks ...
I’m curious, do Unity and unreal automatically recalculate normals when you offset vertices? I was kinda expecting this to get into adjusting the normals along the wave
Unreal definitely doesnt do that
Neither engine recalculates the normals. I didn't go over it to keep the video short - and in the places where I've used this shader it wasn't really needed so I left it out to keep the shader cheaper. But it is possible to do. Maybe I'll cover that in my next video.
@@BenClowardYes! Recalculating normals sounds like a very good topic, great idea. That is a reoccuring problem in vertex shaders which is unfortunately often ignored. And you need it in so many cases, flags, waves, any time you don't offset in the normal direction.
@@BenClowardplease!
instead of setting motion to zero, the second mult with mask broke flag.
What could be the reason?
I use UE5.2
I forgot to mention in the video that in order for this to work, the pivot point of your flag mesh needs to be on the side of the mesh where the flag pole will be. So that could be the problem you're having?
Yes. Problem was in pivot point@@BenCloward
Hello, is it possible to have a tutorial for Decal Material?
I want spawn decal on the ground when the grenade or barrel explodes, but when it's near the wall the part on the ground is correct but the part on the wall is blurry and messed up and warp.(Also to spawn blood on the surface)
I looked for a way, but my problem was not solved. Thanks for your help
Great video! The only thing missing now would be the correct normals.
And the ability to turn the flag.
And fake gravity. Nontheless, great stuff and thanks for the video :)
When using a sine wave for animation, recalculating the normal vector is trivial because the derivative of sin(x) is cos(x), and the derivative (slope) of a curve is perpendicular to the normal vector.
Plug the same input going into your sine wave into cosine to find the tangent, then rotate it 90 degrees (Y, -X) to find the normal.
Is there certain settins the material should be in terms of Material Domain, Blend Mode, Shadeing Model? I plugged everything in how your have shown in UE5 and my shader is very sharp and blown out
For me, it just slides back and forth in Unreal 5.2. Using a TexCoord instead of LocalPosition helped make the texture look wavy, but either way the geometry stays flat and slides back and forth.
I had the same problem. TexCoord solved it. Try rotate your sail 90 degree in the viewport
@@robinj6997 yeah, as I mentioned, I tried a TexCoord, and it made the texture look wavy but the geo moved in a sliding position despite its rotation. I just used cloth in the end. Thanks though.
In 5.3, I set the period of the sine node to 3.14, it worked
Ben, thank you for everything that you're doing! Speaking of shader "expensiveness". If it's possible, can you one day make a video on technical explanation about how things work, please? What influence what, which is the task for GPU, which is for CPU, how to measure and interpret the shader performance, which tools are more and which are less expensive, what is better to use on mobile platforms, and what is should be considered as computer/console only, etc.? I can even try to help you with this if needed, in terms of running tests, editing the video, audio or other tasks 😊 My point is to collect everything you teach us in one video. Because you have mentioned about this aspects here and there in different videos many times. But it would be amazing to have something like a handbook, where you can always return and realize, where and how you can optimize your particular work. I might need mistaken, but I guess it will be extremely useful for many of us. Thanks!
I'll be waiting for the 12 Volume set on this topic ...
Great video! Is there a way to apply some “drag” to the flag so it could be placed on a moving object? I imagine waving the flag back and forth would cause the vertices to sort of lag behind and create that effect. I tried multiplying their positions by world space, but to no luck. I think I need the work space in the last frame.
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
You might need to add a c# component to the object too which pre-calculates and sends values like last frame's position to the material. But with that, very doable.
@@fleity Right, that would probably do it. I am experimenting with a more simple solution by inputting world space into the UVs, so when the object moves through the world the cloth kind of flutters more or less depending on its speed. It sort of simulates a dynamic movement effect without the C# component giving it something each frame. Of course it won't work for a real flag, but for character clothing it seems to do the trick.
@@darkmattergamesofficial you surely can make something which looks plausible-ish enough to work that way, but the stateless nature of shaders kind of prevent you from getting any kind of overlap from a previous position to the current state. Yes World space position uvs and a noise texture or function give you some motion but you probably can't build up and scale down the effect when the player stops moving and you have trouble getting a good direction. In this case the extra step is probably worth it :)
@@fleity Very true. I will mess around with it a bit and see if I can make a stateless system look convincing, but at the end of the day there is that hard limitation where a C# script is the only way forward. I also though about faking some physics on solid objects. For example if you wanted to attach a pouch to a character's belt and have it rotate to match the pull of gravity, like it was suspended somehow. That could work in a shader, but you may only be able to get a locked effect, it wouldn't sway with physics.
I'm guessing UE5 still doesn't have mipmaps for the scene color, or even bilinear filtering?
why doesnt my plane wave like how yours would? mine just wiggle is there something to do with the poly counts?
i figured it out it was indeed the poly counts
Great, instant watch!!
Thanks for your usual awesome tutorials! Could you please do a tutorial on shining diamond/crystal shaders sometime?
Thank you for the suggestion! I'll put it on my list.
After going through this for Unity, when adding the negate and saturate, half of my flag is immobile while the other half is moving normally. Any idea where I went wrong? Thanks
You need to make sure that the pivot point for your mesh is on the side where the flag would attach to the pole instead of in the middle. I think that’s what your problem might be.
Impressive demonstration! Can Unity, using shaders, emulate features from traditional 3D software like Blender or Maya? For instance, can it replicate the bend modifier from 3ds Max? If so, to what degree? Are there limitations or inefficiencies in Unity compared to these 3D packages? My challenge has always been transferring procedural objects with their functions from 3D software to Unity to interact in real-time with features like rigidbody. Would appreciate your insight, my diplomawork centers around this.
Instead of using sine i used cosine and now its waving like it should
Struggling to get this to work. In Unreal, it just seems to make the mesh go left and right.
Did you see the next video in the series? I cover a couple of things there that I forgot to mention in this one. It might help.
@@BenCloward so I found that - for whatever reason - if I made the same simple quad in Blender, it works. It seemed like my version of Unreal 5, the modelling tools were doing something that didn’t place nicely with this approach.
Very nice!
pretty sure i set it up identical and my Flag movement is broken. In Unreal.
Right at the last multiplication with the base output of the mask.
I just multiplied it by a small number. It works now, but still kinda edgy.,
I forgot to mention in the video that in order for this to work, the pivot point of your flag mesh needs to be on the side of the mesh where the flag pole will be. So that could be the problem you're having?
Thanks for the reply. I Figgured that out. My Wave just looks to Edgy now, in contrast to the smooth wave in your video.@@BenCloward
@@ovrava you probably just need more divisions on your plane to give the sine wave enough verts to look smooth
@@ovrava It sounds like you just have a plane that has fewer polygons than the one I'm using. You can reduce the edginess either by increasing the wavelength of your wave or by using a flag mesh that has more polygons.
Just made something similar an hour ago