I’m designing an app where the UI will be “effected by local electromagnetic radiation effects”. The idea is to have random glitches. Flickering, moving scanlines, static, etc.
My first thought was to animate a mask over the UI. Problem there is the masks don’t support alpha/gradients, and I’d need to have a script running that puts the child UI back in place every frame. Plus the effects are limited.
Second thought was to purchase the Soft Mask asset. That solves some issues, I think… I have a question posted in the support thread. My concerns were about the line "Separation of a mask from the masked hierarchy." - did that mean the mask could be a sibling element, thus I could animate it without worrying about the UI moving under it. And also regarding CPU cost. My application is designed to be open/used a LOT while outside - IE: you can’t sit on a sofa plugged in while using it. So battery conservation is a paramount concern. It sounds like Soft Mask might be really processing intensive given all it does.
Another thought is shaders, though I am VERY noobish when it comes to them. I know a little. I can probably figure it out. Just not sure if it’s worth the effort. Saw a few “glitch” assets in the store I haven’t fully looked at yet, wanted to get this posted before I started researching those.
My QUESTION I guess is - are there better ways to accomplish this? Is there an asset someone can recommend that does these things? If I use a shader, will I need to change the shaders of my entire UI? Or can it just be applied to the top level object?
Or - any other creative ideas?