I needed flash like masking, so I’ve made a depth mask shader, but it’s hard to set up and easy to mess up. I saw the new uGUI mask component, and it’s great, but when you move the game object with the mask it doesn’t update. So I was wondering if someone can tell me how the mask component is implemented, or suggest how to change the shader so it’s more flexible. Also I couldn’t get the shader to work with lightning…
1849237–118597–SpriteDepthMask.shader (1.65 KB)
Bump! 
I think it does not ‘seem’ to update because when you move the mask object you must also be moving the children. Maybe try instead to move the children?
Thank you. I missed that parenting part. But i need the child to stay at the same position. So I made a script to reset the childs position and it works. It would be great to change the mask component to target a transform instead of a child. Thats why i was asking for the source or implementation details.
another way to make it seem as though the child is not moving is parent the/a camera to the child so they both move at same time?
or actually i guess that does not work like i thought never mind
I ran into this same exact problem, and finally got around to setting up a workaround yesterday and today.
To get a sort of “reverse mask” effect (i.e.: masking by children, rather than a parent) I am using the scripts offered here by @mouurusai and @Angry_Water . This uses the same stencil-buffer approach as the regular masks, so there’s no soft masking, but it works pretty darn well! Two points of attention here:
0.5 in the Stencil Mask shader produces cleaner, softer edges.StencilDrawInMask shader is drawn after the Transparent queue, all “maskees” will be on the foreground of your scene. I compensate for this using a SetUGUIRenderQueue script (included in the attachments).I also have a situation where I wanted some smoother results, and for my use-case it was enough to simply offset the texture, essentially using the sprite’s own texture as its mask. For this I wrote a simple MaskByOffset shader that’s super easy to use and set up. It’s a bit specific in the problem it solves, but I’ve included it regardless.
Also note that for both solutions I’ve needed to set up a separate Camera just for the UI layer with Clear Flags set to Depth Only.
Hope this helps you a bit! Good luck!
1854914–118906–SpriteMaskByOffset.shader (1.46 KB)
1854914–118907–SetUGUIRenderQueue.cs (555 Bytes)
Thank you. I tested Stencil Mask and Stencil Draw In Mask, it could be what I need. I will need to figure out how to draw mask’s sprite over the whole thing and how to have multiple masks (currently there is only one “hole” that is shared, i need multiple). Using Stencil buffer seems like a better and more robust solution then depth masks. Do you think that the mask component uses it?
I don’t have time to play with this at the moment, so leaving this part be. 
Using the stencil buffer masks you can actually use as many masks as you want! One thing you might want to do for more complex situations is to expose a ref variable to both Materials. That way you can group masks together by using a different reference number for each “group”, so they don’t accidentally intersect or overlap.
Yup! I don’t remember where I saw this, but I’ve seen it confirmed a couple of times. This is also why the Mask component doesn’t handle transparent masking.
Thank you 
Gents,
I have imported the scripts and tried to get this work, I am a bit lost on how to do it. I have no experiece with shaders.
I set SetUGUIRenderQueue.cs on the parent object.
And created a material with your shader in the child object.
When I play the scene nothing seems to happen they just overlay one another.
Am I doing anything wrong?
Regards,
Mark