Looks like I added an overload for reflect that doesn’t exist should be easy to fix.
@simeon, @john - congrats, really nice guys!
i was playing with a planet Earth shader from here:
https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/earth-cycles
it works well for most of the maps, but when i try to drag and drop the bump map into Shade it crashes. I don’t know if that is a problem with Shade or the bump map itself.
i would prefer if the toggle options in the display panel were real toggle buttons which indicate if an option is active or not.
when i disactivate the ground plane my sphere is no longer centred, which is annoying. A two finger translation would be nice.
@Simeon @John I don’t know how this happened, but somehow I got Fract to overlay the Library list. I closed the Library list, but it stayed blank when I opened it again. I closed it, but Fract wouldn’t go away and I couldn’t move it around. I couldn’t get rid of Fract until I closed Shade. After I reopened Shade, everything was OK
Hi Guys,
Just an onlooker watching the frenzy. Been looking at the screens you have posted - can anyone tell me how you would create a scrolling 3D terrain using this tool. It’s something I’d like to look into later - much later not much time now.
Shade just looks like wrapping UVs with a variety of effects at the moment - is that true?
@Bri_G Right now I’m just playing with the different nodes to see what happens since there isn’t much documentation yet. As for a scrolling 3D Terrain, I would say it’s possible, but at the moment I don’t know enough about Shade to give you an idea of how to do it. I’m sure more nodes could be added as time goes on.
@Simeon @John Here another annoyance as I play more with Shade. I don’t like the continuation of the grid movement when I lift my finger. It seems like I can’t move the grid to where I want it because as soon as I lift my finger the grid keeps moving before it completely stops. Maybe the coasting would be OK on really large grids, but it going to be awhile before I get to really large grids. By the way, what’s the size of the grid.
@John The nodes disappeared again. I’m not sure what I was doing when they disappeared. This time I wasn’t rotating the screen. I pressed the home button and reopened Shade but the nodes were still gone. I scrolled around, but couldn’t find them.
@John Here’s another mystery. The nodes and image disappeared, but the connections and library list didn’t. When I closed the Shade and reopened it, only the image and library list was showing.
@dave1707 sounds like what we need on the scrolling is a more lenient minimum velocity threshold so that you can slow down and lift your finger but still fling the canvas if you want to.
The disappearing nodes is bizarre, do they reappear ever for the shader files? Do they disappear often?
@Bri_G this is a tool you might use to build a surface for your scrolling terrain (e.g., you might make it so that you use the slope of the terrain to determine where to draw grass, rocks, etc). You could use the Offset parameter of the surface to displace a mesh to look like terrain, and scroll it, but the focus of this tool is on surface design. It’s like the Shader Lab in Codea.
@dave1707, @Simeon - thanks for the feedback I’ll keep an eye on this thread to follow developments. Too busy at moment with other issues so only following postings for the moment with Codea.
@Simeon That might be a good idea for the scrolling. It seems no matter how hard I try not to move my finger when I lift it, the image still scrolls. As for the missing nodes, I’ve never been able to get them back or find them if they’re way off the screen somewhere. That’s why I was suggesting a button or something to recenter the surface list. So far the nodes have disappeared 4 times and the only thing I can do is delete the Shade and start over.
Back after a long time off the forum, but great to be beta-testing Shade… amazing work guys!
Knocked up a quick Snow Shader (and posted it on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/andymac3d/status/1025741703024537600?s=21 )
Really it just uses the G (Y-up) component of the WorldNormal, splits it to isolate it as a mask, clips where the edge starts using the Step node and then inverts it. Quite easy to add noise and other stuff to add more detail. It just really puts snow on parts of the model facing upwards really.
Not much docs, but have to rely on experience of other Shader dev tools (e.g. Maya) which I guess via trial and error makes it quite fun in a sort of seat of your pants way kinda way!
Would be great to have all attribute numeric fields on sliders, as its a pain to type them in. The only small usability gripe so far. Will report back with other thoughts.
Great work guys!
@John The Shades that I have problems with aren’t that big, maybe 2 or 3 nodes. I do a lot of pasting and deleting of nodes just to see what they do. I’ll try saving one the next time it happens and email it to myself just to see if the error remains. If it does I’ll send it off to you.
@andymac3d - suggest when a node is selected a slider opens for adjustment at the bottom of the screen or, if you have seen Affinity Designer, a rotating dial at the bottom of the screen.
My apologies if this is already in use or planned.
I agree @Bri_G - it’s things like this that make a huge difference when experimenting. Love the drag and drop/connections stuff. Indeed, Lots of other packages (I’m looking at you Autodesk!) can learn a lot from how to create a proper easy to use connections system such as this ie. the swizzle!
@andymac3d Nice snow shader :). We will be adding a slider node that you can use to easily tweak value as well as making any other input a slider if it makes sense (i.e. there are a finite range of values).
@Bri_G that’s an interesting idea about having the slider always visible on the bottom of the screen.
@john - found it interesting in AD and AP, you could also add a text input there for more precise control or other controls used in that node. A small heading on top of the control box describing the nodes functionality.
Also, if a run mode is involved, the control box could disappear.
Here’s a few potential bugs and feature requests, these may be covered elsewhere and/or I’m talking nonsense
Bug: Plane mode (for Shader display) appears to have the grid and plane coincident (at y=0) hence causing intersection errors as the Shader can’t resolve what’s in front of what (causing noisy polygons). You can use offset or switch it off I guess.
Bug: Shaders sometimes appear not to give the same result after they’ve been saved and re-opened
Bug: Can’t seem to get Opacity to work using any method (ie a straight value or via a connected texture). What’s the correct workflow for this? It could be me and how I understand opacity in this context.
Feature Req: Duplicating shaders in the browser would be useful (you can copy, but no duplicate)
Feature Req: Collapsing sub-networks into a single ‘function’ (with exposed input and outputs like a ‘black box’) that can be reused would be great, as well as helping with readability on larger networks. An Annotation feature would be good too.