Is it possible?

[Anonymous]

So I'm very new to 3d and am still learning a lot, A question popped into my head that I can't seem to find an answer too. I was wondering if it is possible to animate and create a shader, that would change texture maps to (and here's the complicated part). An camouflaged shader... let me elaborate. Now I'm not talking a cammo shader, nor just switching the visibility of the character off. Rather for the shader to act like a Cuttlefish, mimicking it's environment on it's body and not simply letting the viewer see through it.

At first I thought this wouldn't be possible without using the background textures, how ever I was thinking about how light refracts when it's looked through in a drop of water and was wondering if some how you could hack that effect dropping out spectacularity to make it appear as if it's on the model/character, perhaps even using an AO map to show shape in the refraction, perhaps even use a layered shader so it's not fully clear. It's way beyond my skills set, I understand the principals of 3d shader networks, but not to that extent.

Thought I would ask here to see if it might be possible or even maybe spark an idea in someone.

[Anonymous]

2 things that pop into mind: Refraction and Projection.

If you take a look at the way they did Hank in Finding Dory, it was animating a mix between the base shader and projected shaders when you break it down into it's simpliest form.

This would pretty a bit complex to setup, especially if the environments keep changing, but should be a doable system.

Another option would be, as you said, to use refraction to make the character in question completely transparent, but keep a small amount of warping so we know they're there. You can always make character specific lights that don't create specularity (as well as disable whatever generates spec in your shaders) and tell the environment lights not to effect the character through light linking.

[Anonymous]

haha I knew my idea wasn't original but I had no idea that there was something like that already out there, I had never seen finding dory. I wonder how Pixar handled that problem.