Shader Painter Beta

Hello, thank you for your interest in our asset.

  1. The list of planned features is as follow:
  • Multi ID Materials compatibility (our priority now, will be available in the following days hopefully)
  • Animation Editor Support and add an API for programmers (to be able for instance to raise the water level programmatically
  • Brush size optimizations
  • Support multiple Layers
  • Maps Exporter
  • Rotation of the brush visible in paint mode (Done, will be in version 1.1 coming today)
  • Selecting objects already integrated in Shader painter will update the window automatically
  • Skinned meshes support
  • Solo mode (objects isolated) (Done, will be in version 1.1 coming today)
  • Lots of optimizations
  • And so much moreā€¦.

If you have suggestion, feel free to submit them!

  1. Vertex count has no influence in the painting process. If you look at the simple water example you can see this a plane with few vertex and there are a lot of details.

  2. We use a mesh collider (automatically added when you start painting) to detect where the paint should go on the model. In most case you have nothing to do, if there is a collider before starting to paint it is disable so you can recover it after if you need. In a future release we will certainly make it smoother. Once the model is painted, it doesnā€™t require the mesh collider anymore.
    To summarize: you should not worry about this.

  3. The performance cost in high detailed environment is equivalent to a regular shader doing the same thing without painting. The painting process take some computation but after, when the game is lunch it has no performance drawbacks. In the videos you can see a whole city with a lot of details and with painting on multiple places and it run as smoothly than without shader painter. Of course there is more computation by the GPU with water shader than with a simple shader but with shader painter you can add details without adding any vertex. It is way more efficient to use Shader Painter than 3D modeling water flowing through rocksā€¦

If you need more precision feel free to ask!

3 Likes

Nice and detailed feedback!

So in short we are painting on a splatmap? Also one more question before purchasing, painting on same object type (2 prefab chairs) will they be individually painted or?

Thanks

1 Like

Yes it is a painting on a splatmap.
And yes 2 prefab chairs can have different painting. You can have the two behaviors :

  • If you instantiate the prefab twice and then paint on it, you have two different painting
  • if you paint on a model and after that you copy it, the painting will be copied too.

Everything is possible with shader painter! :sunglasses:

Need to know the efficiency.
And is it possible to generate the textures?

Hello,

It is as efficient as an equivalent shader. The water shader with Shader Painter has a performance cost as high as the same water shader without Shader Painter.
If I understand well your second question, you can import any texture to Shader Painter and thus use generated textures.
If I misunderstood your questions or if you need more precision, feel free to ask!

DeBugs Iā€™m afraid I have to ask for a refund at the moment Iā€™m having too many issues with it, and not getting the result at all as I imagined, not to mention that the tool crashed Unity, to an unstable matter sometimes, for instance, if I delete an object that was in the ā€œSelect Prefabā€.
Eg. Screenshot by Lightshot

The Paint mode is neat, I do have to give it that, however, too many issues arise, like the Reflection of the water, which should be linked to the Reflection Probes, not a fixated decapitated system, which was used prior to 5.2f Unity version.

And some textures would be nice to have, and by my opinion are missing like Emission textures, more than 2 paintable layers, and etc.

Do not get me wrong, or anybody at all. Shader Painter is a really good tool, it just doesnā€™t fit me at the moment. I would be more than glad to pay later 50$+ for a lot more polished tool, however, Iā€™m working constantly, and this is a deadlock I cannot surpass at the moment.

3.5/5 for me - Great tool, amazing splat map (Quality is superb regarding the layer interaction). Keep up the work mate

Edit: The wind tool is something I have not seen yet and this deserves a special place, as it works flawlessly in my testing.

3 Likes

Hello and thank you for your support,
Sure, no problem for the refund. Please contact us at contact@ciconia-studio.com with your order number (OR*********) that you received by email to proceed with it (I am not the one who will do it).
We are still very interested in your problems. We canā€™t reproduce your error (at least with the version 1.1 which is still reviewed by unity) Which Unity version are you using?
We are still in beta so we do not hide that there are still bugs and we are working hard to fix everything.

For the water shader and the Reflection probes, I am a programmer and I donā€™t understand everything about it even if our CG artist explain me what it was :slight_smile: He told me that you can use the cube map or the reflection probe or even both. If you need more info, ask directly @CiconiaStudio !
About adding emission texture and multiple layers, are in fact in the list of planed features. So stay tune !

If you like the wind shader you can buy it without Shader Painter here https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/directx-11/wind-shaders-60930

Glad you like it anyway, I hope we will see you soon :slight_smile:

1 Like

Having recently spotted this, and for a fraction of the price of alternatives, I have my eye on this! One alternative I came across looks impressive though itā€™s a bit pricey IMO; another was a lower price though it only supported vertex colouring. But this is something else. Good work! :smile:

2 Likes

Thank you for your interest :slight_smile:
What pricey alternative are you talking about ?

No problem! I think it was Vertex Tool Pro? It looks good but Ā£40 is a bit much imo.

P.S. I went to purchase SP but the price is Ā£26.80. Was it that price a few hours ago or am I going a bit bonkers? o.o Iā€™m sorry; Iā€™m a bit sleepy ha ha.

Vertex Tool Pro only support vertex painting i think.
The price of Shader Painter hasnā€™t change, 25$ (but it will when we will add more feature, you should buy it now :wink: )

2 Likes

Ah yes, true.

I apologize for the confusion; I should pay more attention!

2 Likes

I have vertex tools pro :slight_smile:
but still changed to shader painter

mostly because of the annoying need to increase the vertex count to paint in more detail.
If you want to ā€œrepaintā€ or change models from the asset store its just too much of a hassle.
Especially if you have external painting tools like 3dcoat or substance painter.

So shader painter allows me to work in unity and still paint ā€œwithout verticesā€.

2 Likes

Hey everyone!
Shader Painter Beta v1.1 is available.

  • Added Solo Mode (Isolate the mesh from the scene)
  • Added rotation angle buttons (Rotate the brush in 4 different angles)
  • Now you can visualize the brush rotation.
  • New Buttons UI

Important : Before upgrading Shader Painter make sure to close the Shader Painter Window. Otherwise, the shader of the model selected in Shader Painter will be reset to default.
You will not lose your painting but you will lose all chosen settings and maps!

2 Likes

As stated, the tool is more than promising and when it comes to a point where it has all the features and stability, again, no issue at all dishing out 50 if not 75$. I have my eye on this and would love to see it out of beta asap!

Great work. Also regarding the errors a bit more feedback:
While deleting an object and having it as a preset for ā€œselectedā€ it causes issues with the ā€œScene Viewā€ (you just see a gray image in the scene view) and constant errors, until you close it up, and go to Window and reenable it.

Also while doing this a fatal error occurred to me twice crashing the Unity whole. My Unity version is the latest, 2017.3.0f3

Waw that sound serious, we never had anything like that while testing Shader Painter! Even when we reproduce your steps exactly nothing happens. Thatā€™s very odd. We will do more investigation on it, thank you for your feedback and your support!

Maybe itā€™s clashing with other assets? Hard to test that scenario.

Two days ago I downloaded SP and tried messing around with the demo scene and creating a cutout shader on the cutout shader tent example, only to have the tentā€™s model disappear. :o

P.S. Is it possible to make puddles made with SP contain animated ripples in them for rainy scenes?

Hello,
Your model disappear from the hierarchy? Because if it is just it doesnā€™t show on the view it might be because you paint ā€˜holeā€™ on the whole modelā€¦

For animated ripples it will come with the next version of shaders. We will also add soon an API to trigger effect from script like ā€˜raise water levelā€™ when it is raining change wind power dynamically.

2 Likes

Perhaps this is due to the value set in the Mask amount setting. Set the value to 0 and check ā€œDisable albedo alphaā€ property. Now, you should only see your painting.
If the model is still invisible this means that you have paint all the model. Go to paint mode and select a negative value for the opacity (Choose -1 for now). By passing the mouse over the model it should appears.
Also, you can just clear the mask by pushing the clear button.

Let us know if this fix the problem.

2 Likes