I have a ring shaped normal map (tga) and Im looking to create a ripple effect, like from something from an explosion. When I apply the texture to a material, I cant seem to select the correct shader to a) get rid of the background color b) make it transparent that the ripple is distorting the background.
Im new to particle fx and material shaders. Can anyone point me in the right direction on getting this effect down.
The plan:
Apply the normalmap ring to a material
attach that material to a particle
Apply the one shot to that particle
set it to increase in size based upon life.
In order to distort the background, you need to use a render texture and an image effect.
There is a sample in nvidia site that does exactly what you want and its very easy to make it work with unity.
If you want to do it really cheap and fake the distortion on an Indy version of unity try this.
Use an unlit pass that is multiplied by 2
Author your texture so the areas you want to be transparent are 50% grey.
The areas of you warp effect that you want to be highlighted to be greater than 50% grey and the areas that you want to darken less than 50% grey.
This will give you a fake embossed lighting effect that is as cheap as you can get. And if its quick on screen it can be very effective. be subtle with you highlights and especially the shadows. A bit of color also helps the effect as long as the neutral areas remain 50% grey.
Post again if you get stuck and I’ll do up a webplayer/package as an example.
