Release 7.0.0

[orels1]

v7.0.0

Summary

Version 7.0.0 adds lots of new features, improvements, and bugfixes. This release was heavily driven by community requests in my Discord, so if you have any suggestions or feedback - please let me know!

New Shaders

• PBR
  • Hotspotting: An auto-hotspotting shader that can be used to quickly set up reusable hotspot materials
  • AreaLit: A special variant of the main shader with included AreaLit support.
  • Decals: A simple Decalery-compatible decals shader.
  • VRSL GI: A special variant of the main shader with included VRSL GI support.
• Toon
  • Version 2 of the toon shader is now available! Here are the highlights:
    • You can now have up to 4 matcaps, detail normal layers and decals
    • Most things can be masked by a mask texture with channel and UV selection
      • This allows you to make use of highly tiled detail textures that can preserve high quality detail at low resolutions
    • UV Discard is now included by default
    • PBR Reflections have been redone and are now based on the ORL Standard shader
  • You can find the full docs here

New Features

• Extra Passes are now supported by the shader generator!
  • This allows you to add extra passes to your shaders without losing all the features of the shader generator (compared to using %PostPasses and %PrePasses)
  • Read more about it here
• Cloth Shading mode added to all PBR shaders.
  • This is still experimental, so please report any issues you encounter
  • You can learn more about it here
• ClearCoat Option added to all PBR shaders in default shading mode
  • This is still experimental and might not support all sources of lighting, please report any issues you encounter
  • You can learn more about it here
• Screen Space Reflections module
  • This module allows you to add screen space reflections to any PBR shader.
  • Due to its cost - it is not included in any shaders by default, but you can use it via Configurable Shaders
  • You can learn more about it here
  • The implementation is based on Mochie's shaders
• Standard-Based shaders can now adjust Stencil parameters
• You can now occlude baked specular via Realtime Shadows. This effect is not physically accurate but can be helpful when used on dynamic objects
• Vertex Lights now properly light up objects using Standard shaders. This requires enabling vertex lighting in Advanced Settings
• You can now apply in-shader tonemapping on mobile platforms. This can drastically improve the look of your environments on Quest/Android. See the full docs here
• Toon shader now fully sports baking. Recommended to be used with a directional lightmap for best results
• Toon shader now has support for vertex-color masking of outline thickness
• Toon shader can now use outlines without stencil. This can be useful for adding extra detail
• LTCGI effect brightness can now be clamped to a 0-1 range and has a Maximum Brightness setting
• You can now use BIRP Standard shader-style Detail Albedo mixing. This can be toggled via "Legacy Albedo Mixing" when using the Separated Detail Map mode.
• "Baked Specular Occlusion" slider has been added to the Lightmapping section of all the Standard shaders. This can be used to control how much occlusion is applied to baked specular, e.g. from directional lightmaps or lightprobes.
• Added a "Force Discard" toggle to the UI Sheen shader. This can be used to force-discard transparent pixels of the sprite to avoid white line artifacts on the edges of the sprite.
• Shader Generator now supports %PostVertex function blocks in all Templates. This allows you to modify the final output of the Vertex shader, after the VertexBase function runs.
• The VFX Clouds shader got a major update.
  • Now supports Directional Light-based shading, using a color ramp (similar to toon shaders).
  • Now supports normal recalculation. This provides more accurate shading that follows the extruded shape of the clouds. This effect can be a little noisy, so you can use the Precision slider to adjust it until it looks good.
• You can now use all 8 UV channels by defining NEED_UV4/NEED_UV5/NEED_UV6/NEED_UV7 in your shader defines.
• Configurable shaders can now accept arbitrary modules from anywhere in your project. Using the new "Custom Module" checkbox. This allows you to add modules that are not included in the shader generator.
• Bakery Volumes are now supported in all PBR Shaders. Check out the Lightmapping section for more information.
• The Shader Inspector can now show a Vector2 field for Vector properties. The most basic usage looks like this %Vector2(Min, Max). Check out the relevant Shader Inspector section for more information.
• You can now draw a Bakery Volume Assigner field in the Shader Inspector by using %BakeryVolumeAssigner(). Check out the relevant Shader Inspector section for more information.
• All of the keywords has been limited to their respective shader stages. This should improve shader complication and mesh channel resolving times.
• You can now use a new block type %CheckedInclude() to only include a shader include file (e.g. a .cginc or .hlsl) if that file actually exists on disk. This is useful when working around conitional includes via keywords that sometimes produce errors in console. Check out the relevant Shader Generator Section for more information.
• You can now define a hook point similar to the Template files inside your function blocks. Check out the Template docs for more information.
• %ShaderModifiers as well as all of the %PassModifiers variants (like %MetaPassModifiers) now support overriding. This means that values you set in your .orlshader file will override the values in the FragmentBase or other files of your lighting model and other dependencies. Check out Shader Modifiers for more information.
• Render Type selector. All PBR and VFX shaders now have a render type selector. This allows you to switch between Opaque, Cutout, Transparent, and Fade blending modes. There is also a "Custom" option which allows you to specify your own blending parameters.
  • This also introduces a new shader tag ORL_RenderType which allows you to enforce a particular value of the render type, prevent the user from changing it. See the Special Tags section for more information.
  • The dropdown itself uses a new %RenderType() drawer function to display the available options and set the relevant properties on the material. See the Render Type section for more information.
  • This change means that if your render type is one of the preset options - you can use the ORL_RenderType tag to enable it without having to set any %ShaderModifiers or %PassModifiers yourself. However, you can still use those blocks to override the blending behaviour thanks to the new sorting and overriding mechanisms mentioned above.
• You can now bake down procedural materials using something like a Hotspotting shader into static textures and PBR materials. Check out the Map Baker section for more information.
• You can now explicitly turn on passing normal maps to the GSAA calculation. Leaving it off can help avoid a "pixelation" effect on high frequency normal maps.
  • This is turned off by default on all materials. You can turn it on for your existing materials via Tools > orels1 > Upgrade Materials.
• Toon shaders now properly support Vertex Lights.
• Toon shaders now have a new Raise Minimum Light checkbox which allows you to bump the minimum brightness of your material in environments with no lighting data.
• Toon shaders can now sample lightprobe colors uniformly, which is desireable in some cases.
• Glitch Screen shader now has a separate Transparency texture that can be used to control the alpha channel of the material. It now also supports different render types.
• You can now enable LTCGI on mobile platforms.
• Toon shaders now support using Bicubic sampling for the normal map. This can be useful for lower resolution/more aliased normal maps.
• Toon shaders now have a "Monochrome Lighting" slider. This allows you to control how much the color of the environment lighting affects the object's color. At 1 only the intensity of the lighting is used.
• Added a Depth Fade module. It behaves like the Soft Particles mode in the default unity Particle Shaders.
  • This module is not currently included in any shaders, but you can use it via Configurable Shaders
  • You can learn more about it here
• Added a Vertex Colors module. It allows you to use the vertex color data to control various properties of the material.
  • It is most useful for things like Particles, so you can use "Color over Lifetime" option to drive material Color and Alpha.
  • This module is not currently included in any shaders, but you can use it via Configurable Shaders
  • You can learn more about it here
• You can now define hook points within your modules.
  • This was previously only available in the Template files
  • Using this feature - you can inject extra code into things like Data Structs or functions
  • Read more here: Hook Points
• Added box projection contact hardening to the PBR shaders.
  • Based on DavidM's implementation
  • Improves the accuracy of reflections closer to the "surface" of the mesh
  • See Base Shader for more info
• Shader Generator now has a Project Settings window.
  • This allows you to add or remove always included modules, change the default lighting model, and remap modules to your custom ones.
  • Take a look at the Project Settings docs page for more information.
• Shader Generator now supports writing to SV_Depth in the PBR shaders. Check out the ORL Shader Definition docs for more info.
• Shader Inspector can now add H3 headers via ### Some Header syntax
• You can now add horizontal separators in the Shader Inspector via ---, e.g. UI_Separator("---", Int) = 0
• Standard shaders now support a fast triplanar UV mode as one of the Mapping Space options

Bugfixes

• The tangent normals sign is now properly calculated per-vertex. This should not affect most users
• Specular occlusion now properly occludes reflection probes again. You might need to tune the Specular Occlusion slider to adjust the effect. Please note that the slider has been renamed to "Reflection Probe Occlusion" in the UI
  • You can migrate existing materials via Tools > orels1 > Upgrade Materials. This will adjust the new specular values to be closer to the pre-upgrade look
• Fixed off-by-one errors in the channel selector for Albedo and Emission textures
• Shader tags are now de-duplicated automatically, this can help with some issues with Bakery Lightmapper
• Gradient editor now correctly handles "Fixed" blending mode. Thanks @lackofbindings for the fix!
• All UV channels have been changed to use float4 instead of half4 to avoid precision issues on mobile platforms.
• Fixed a number of issues with the Texture Packer when using mixed color spaces.
• Fixed an issue where Triplanar Effects would not map the textures correctly resulting in flipped textures on the sides.
• Fixed an issue where the material emission values where not multiplied correctly (to mimic Unity's Standard emission behaviour)
  • You can migrate existing materials via Tools > orels1 > Upgrade Materials. This will multiply the emission to match your current scene values
• Fixed an issue with cutout materials not tiling the texture correctly in the shadowcaster pass
• Vertex Animation shader inspector behaves correctly again
• Fixed a number of issues with specular occlusion being overly aggressive
• Improved UV derivative issues in the Glitch Screen shader. This could cause unwanted artifacts on the edges of the glitch

Other Changes

• The channel packer will now default Alpha channel slot to read from the Red channel, as that is the most common use-case
• Updated the Tessellated Displacement shader to use latest shader generator tech. It now has MONOSH and can be used with Configurable shaders.
• "Specular Occlusion" has been renamed to "Reflection Probe Occlusion" to better reflect what is happening under the hood.
• Some properties in the Lightmapping section were moved around to improve usability.
• Dissolve now has configurable Cutoff Range with adjusted defaults. Thanks @lackofbindings for the suggestion!
• The generator now includes a BiRPtoURP translation file. Based on Error.mdl's implementation. You can now use it to write code that would be cross-compatible between URP and BiRP. Check out the source file to see whats available!
• Depth texture definition is now always included. You no longer need to specify NEED_DEPTH in your defines.
• Configurable shaders can now be hand edited in code. This allows you to use the UI to set up the basic shader and then use code to edit it further. However, this makes it no longer editable via UI. A relevant warning will be shown in the inspector and the editing UI will be locked. You can use a "Force Reset" button to clear your changes and sync the shader back to the configuration.
• %RemapSlider() and CombineWith() functions have improved layout that is more consistent with other properties.
• The inspector of the PBR shaders has been simplified and sectioned in a better way. Stencils now exist in their own sections as they are not expected to be changed frequently.
• CreateMeshData function of MeshData struct now takes in a facing parameter to flip the TBN matrix for correct normal directions on meshes with visible backfaces.
• Since all shaders can now be Opaque/Transparent/Cutout/Fade, the Cutout shader has been renamed to Foliage and will recieve relevant features in the future
• The Clouds shader now has a Depth Blending option that allows you to disable the blending even when the depth buffer is present.
• The Clouds shader now respects the transparency of Bottom and Top gradient colors
• All the built-in templates now have a %PassFunctions block inserted before the all the other function definitions.
  • This allows you to add functions that depend on speific structs and other per-pass data that you want to reference inside your other functions
• AreaLit module can now be used in the VFX-based shaders
• LTCGI module has been upgraded to the V2 API.
  • If you're using LTCGI - make sure to update your LTCGI version to V2+
  • This also adds an Alpha premultiply and more granular specular/diffuse controls. Check out the LTCGI docs for more information
• VRSLGI module can now be used in the VFX-based shaders
• Parallax module has been updated to use simpler code and support angle-based flattening, which can help with layering artifacts