I’m making a water shader using Unity Shader Graph. One of the features of said shader is emanating vertex displacement ripples from a specific point in space relative to the object. However, I’d like to have many ripples emanating from different points using different parameters at one time. I’m new to shader graph, and I don’t know how to approach the problem. Any ideas of what to do?
If you start with a smooth gradient, you can use the falloff as a UV coordinate to run a texture over, creating ripples. Radial UVs are created using that method, replacing the left/right axis with a circular gradient so that the texture wraps around the circle and pinches at the pole in the center.
I don’t know the most efficient way to place a series of radial gradients where you need ripples, but that would be where I’d start. If there’s a set number of ripples, you might be able to just layer X gradients (using Max values, not Add), and apply your rippling to it. You’d need to filter out the pure 0 and 1 values so the ripples don’t smear out at their ends. Maybe there’s a way to project decals down to generate that mask more dynamically.