How to make deform shader show rotations as well?

Unity Engine
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1

I have a shader graph which I got from the PolyToots tutorial:

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It creates an effect of an object deforming a surface, like so:

frankcoldarizonaalligatorlizard

The issue I’m having is that the effect can not seem to rotate at all. For instance, if I choose a complex shaped mesh like a star and then rotate the star, the deform effect on the surface remains of the same rotation the entire time.

And so: Is there a way to incorporate rotation into this effect?

Thank you!

2

The shader just adds a displacement of vertices in the direction of their normals, scaled to the value input on a render texture. Whatever you draw into the render texture is going to be put into the effect as-is. If you draw your star shape at the same angle on the render texture, your star shape will carry through to the displacement at the same angle. Is your deformer camera maybe moving with your star mesh? If you adjust your layer filters, are you seeing the star shape turn in relation to the deformer camera?

3

Oops, it does seem capable of turning on the deformer camera view. What might be a problem is that the Camera is picking up a particle system rather than the mesh itself maybe? Therefore, it is only capable of seeing things in a circular shape, rather than accurate to any complex mesh…

Flowerpot example. Not sure how to make the actual shape pick up on the camera instead.

4

Update: I removed the particle system from the RenderTexture Camera’s view altogether (which only looks at a “Deformers” Layer), and just added in the flower mesh itself.

This works almost how I want, except for that the accuracy of the mesh showing through isn’t great.

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Is there a way to increase accuracy of the vertex deform to make it more faithful to the mesh?

5

A shader can only move a vertex that exists. Your cloth needs to have a lot more vertices to show a more intricate shape.

6

I see. I changed out the plane mesh for one with 6561 vertices. It is certainly more detailed but it’s ‘spiky’ and exaggerated compared to the actual shape.

I could give it more poly but maybe it is something else as well. Also I changed the flowerpot to simply white in case it was an issue with the RenderTexture trying to output color before.