topic Re: Shaderfx in Stingray Forum (Read Only)

Shaderfx

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 07:33:16 GMT

Hello guys,

nice work on making an easy to use engine. I like it so far. Just wondered about the shaderfx compatibility.

Can I build complex shaders, let's say toon shaders, water/ ocean shader or an emissive plasma shader and export it to stingray?

Or do I have to use the stingray pbr shader for everything? Sry it wasn't clear in the introduction and the documentation.

Keep up the good work, can't wait for the next update.

Re: Shaderfx

dan.matlack — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 15:48:55 GMT

If you use direct x shaders in your dcc tool, it should be just about 1 to 1 when exporting into Stingray. If you use a standard shader or something else, you may have to do some work in once in Stingray to get what you're after. We do have a new tutorial up on creating custom shaders in Stingray as well -- in the vid we do a toon shader.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I54fy7MB_8g

Re: Shaderfx

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Feb 2016 19:42:39 GMT

Thanks for your help dan, I was bit confused about it.

Re: Shaderfx

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 01:45:56 GMT

I just noticed that the standard shader fx shader is not supported which is a bummer because people like kostas (http://www.kostas.se/) have created already nice looking shader

Re: Shaderfx

MatthewDoyleArt — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 18:12:40 GMT

Sweet link! I'm downloading his shaders now. Thanks.

Re: Shaderfx

Shanii2 — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 15:58:17 GMT

Hi, can anyone tell me how to control the normal map, in maya you can control the amount of bumb value on the surface , what nodes i need to connect to control the normal mapping.Thanks

Re: Shaderfx

dan.matlack — Wed, 02 Mar 2016 22:47:43 GMT

Ideally you should not need to change any intensity on your normal map. It should be set up properly in photoshop or baked down properly from a high poly mesh. If you'd like to have values to adjust, you can do a multiply in the shader node ... though that may act a bit weird as you change the values. I recommend using photoshop to make your map have more or less depth.

Re: Shaderfx

Mircea24 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 07:28:25 GMT

Do you Guis know a way to create an simple Skin shader? with just a SSS map?

Re: Shaderfx

Shanii2 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 07:29:55 GMT

Thanks, well i saw in one of the forum post is by using linear interpolation to blend the base normal with normal map by weight that could be control by number or slider. the thing is sometimes normal maps gets too exgerrated and like things such as grass ,leaves, grass plains, tree barks, it does'nt look really nice on such stuff, i generate normal maps in PS, using filter>3d, and many came as correctly but sometimes that to gets overdone, so thats why and like in extensive environment, getiing each normal map came out correctly is really time consuming, so thats why im choosing to work with shader to fine tune the normal maping.Thanks for suggestion 🙂

Re: Shaderfx

Shanii2 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 07:43:39 GMT

well im not an expert, but as suggestion and, what i normaly, do is, using Maps as follow,

Texture map (512x512 - 1024x1024) for LODs

Baked high res normal map(512X512) or generated normal map (1024x1024)

using roughness maps starting from grey scale of (1024x1024) texture to darker shades, you need to adjust it accordingly it fits with your normal.

for a realistic human skin only use a darker shade of roughness map previously used as AO map. and using the same roughness map as Density map produces a fine finish to your skin shader.

You can then copy this around to apply to multiple characters

Re: Shaderfx

Mircea24 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 08:10:58 GMT

hmm i dont know what the Density map does but i will have a try Thank you ! for the help

Re: Shaderfx

Shanii2 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 09:15:28 GMT

Well to illustrate what it actually does if you have a semi transparent model like glass, the density node, will make it look translucent, and if opague, it'll give it a much solid look like a wax candle or so, you can adjust the density using the roughness map you use or you can put a scaler input and tweek it however you like.

Re: Shaderfx

dan.matlack — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 16:25:21 GMT

Play around with subsurface scattering ... http://help.autodesk.com/view/Stingray/ENU/?guid=__stingray_help_release_notes_readme_1_1_html

Re: Shaderfx

Mircea24 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 17:04:59 GMT

Thank you! the link was verry usefull

Re: Shaderfx

Shanii2 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 17:11:19 GMT

Hi, dan how do i workaround for LODs for vegetation and environment, there are only 4 tree meshes i have in my scene that i have used to populate, my scene providing different leaves, and tree bark shaders, i know my mesh are not very high poly, there just upto 5k to 9k, my textures are also not too much hD resolution, how can i optimize my scene, my Gpu is running out although its still performing smoothly.

Bellow is my prologue level render and next is gpu memory, when i press test level, it will rise up to 6.99 gb, how can i optimize it

Re: Shaderfx

dan.matlack — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 17:16:58 GMT

You can set up your LODs in your DCC tool, Max or Maya and they will import.

http://help.autodesk.com/view/Stingray/ENU/?guid=__stingray_help_importing_assets_level_of_detail_html

http://help.autodesk.com/view/Stingray/ENU/?guid=__stingray_help_getting_started_common_windows_unit_editor_lod_panel_html

You can always optimize as well with lower texture size and lower poly count to begin with. If you set up your LODs properly though you should see a nice improvement.

Re: Shaderfx

Shanii2 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 18:05:26 GMT

yes thats right i know, but the thing is, i dont have much high res models in scene its just smae models with diffferent materials , are applied to populate the scene and that too the textures are also not very high res, they are just like 72 or 115 pixels. Isnt there a way to control the shading itself, like using shaderfx, for example, a workflow in shadergraph that if at a certain camera distance, it would turn off the use of normal map,roughness, AO map or so. Like built a shader or in flow, to control it. 🙂

Re: Shaderfx

dan.matlack — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 18:36:35 GMT

I'm not sure we have any out of the box settings for shader lods, but I can find out. If your scene is small, has small textures and low poly count, what are your performance hits?

Re: Shaderfx

Shanii2 — Thu, 03 Mar 2016 20:11:19 GMT

well, for runtime i can still manage something out, like unspawning the unit once the camera's far enough, and similarly, respawning it back when reaches certain area, but while setting level, sometimes, my ram hits very high, i need to close background apps to spare some, like now i did save 1 gb ram by closing other aps including, internet, So, can you please find me a away like using, flow or shadergraph, to create such LOD,, i saw in video in which you swap the normal maps based on camera distance, is there a way, because my texture are not above, 512X512 as you can see in the picture ive send earlier. 🙂 Thanks

Re: Shaderfx

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 14:28:01 GMT

that is strange that your scene is taking so much memory. did you try the stingray profiler ?