Tank Tread (handled with shader)

Graphics Shaders & Materials
1

So I’ve got a tank tread, and I want to animate the tread moving on it when it moves.

It’s all one piece of geometry, so essentially I just want the tread area of the UV to move, instead of having to have the actual model move (since rigging that would suck and probably would be inefficient anyway).

Now if I was in UDK I’d just plug in a panner with a RGB mask and I’d be all set. Can this sort of thing be easily done in Unity? I’ve messed around with Strumpy’s editor, but it seems less intuitive than the material editor in UDK.

If anyone knows if this is possible in Unity, please let me know. If anyone has any helpful tutorials in this regard, feel free to post them too!

Thanks!

2

I imagine you want something like…

movingUVs = (_Time.y * _TreadSpeed) * normalUVs;

Where _Time is a built-in variable, as documented here;
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Components/SL-BuiltinValues.html

And _TreadSpeed would be a float you feed in via the shader’s properties or something to control how fast the tracks are moving.

3

Another option if you want fancier tracks.