It is my pleasure!

This shader works only for opaque rendering, it does not handle the transparency unfortunately ... It would be something to dig in if I would remake this shader

@@pixtrick i know that but if is possible to make the shadow to have lighter color's and add objects that only have shadow I'm probably able to make the system i wand to make.

That's good news!

Hey ! Thanks ! Yes it's my bad actually, I should do an updated version of this tutorial since it's quite old now. It's due to the order in the operations, I posted a fix last week on the GitHub repository if you want to take a look !

Not sure, but all the tests I've made so far point to the fact it is not

Hey ! You can check the pinned comment, maybe it would solve your problem

@@pixtrick I found the problem I was not using URP T_T Anyways awesome video and I appreciate the response!

@@jarvinvruizeeslao happens x)

Don't hesitate to message me on discord if you need anything

Hey ! Have you also imported the .hlsl file that was provided in the files ?

​@@pixtrick Yea I did

Can you contact me on discord? It would be easier to understand your issue

I'm still doing it today 😭

You're flattering me x)

Thanks a lot ! :D

Thanks a lot !

Thanks ! I'll try to post it as soon as possible

Absolutely, that was just an example, it's totally up to you to improve this ;) In this case what you would do instead is disabling the collision between the 2 colliders basically

What unity version are you using ?

2022.3.17f1@@pixtrick

You have to make sure that the depth priming is off, and I'm not entirely sure but I think setting the rendering path to forward can help as well

@@pixtrick yes it is disabled and the rendering path to forward, I tried different depth texture modes as well. I'll try to isolate the problem by making a new project and make some test and I'll come back to you.

@@TheGameLecturer all right ! By the way you can message me on discord if you prefer

Hey, I'm not very sure about that, you should try ! In any case, if the render features are not available, you can still use the stencil buffer through custom shaders

It is indeed possible, but you won't have access to the render features. Basically, the URP allows a per-layer rendering with its render features (so you don't have to worry about the materials of each object of the layer), whereas the built-in RP don't, so you'll have to write custom shaders to get the same result, it's a bit harder but 100% doable in my opinion.

@@pixtrick thanks for the response! I finally succeeded! I think the hardest part was that i used Amplify and its stencil buffer parameters were some time buggy 😅 But you're explanation was really great and help me find the way!!

Unfortunately no, shader graph doesn't support the stencil buffer

Hey ! You just have to use a render feature then. Basically, instead of using a shader for the mask material, you just have to create a render feature with a Never stencil comparison operation, so that it won't show on screen. You can use any material you want for that mask then since it won't show on screen at all. EDIT : I forgot to mention that after doing that, you'll have to use the Fail operation instead of the Pass operation, because the comparison operation will always be false, so that the Pass operation will never trigger.

Hmm, yeah, I just can't seem to figure it out. I was trying to make something for the Apple Vision Pro but you can't use normal shaders, you can only use shader graph (or other node based shading methods), because they use MaterialX which requires node based shading. Thanks for your help though! Appreciate you taking the time to respond.@@pixtrick

Decals are not compatible with the stencil buffer, or at least I haven't find a way to make them work together yet. We discussed about it on the discord server of the community but didn't find a solution ... Regarding SSAO, I'm not entirely sure why it doesn't work as intended ... It may be either the AfterRenderingOpaques event queue or simply because objects rendered through a render feature are not considered as "real" geometries

Thanks for the kind words ! :D

I'll try to make a video on that

Hi ! It's an inverted render culling, you can access this parameter in the material editor

Hey, thanks a lot ! I'm not sure to fully understand your request to be honest, is it about the floating text in the magic card? If that so, it's only a canvas in world space with appropriate dimensions

@@pixtrick nonono, I have an eyetracker device, I can know the user position and I want that the monitor screen act like that portal to make that card effect, It's so tricky. If you atatch the game camara to the user real position works but not that good that the card effect

It's hard to explain, also is similar to the 3d wallpaper efect, but that use the acelerometer, is not that real effect

@@ToniehGaming ok i think i'm slowly getting it. Is it like a parallax effect ?

@@pixtrick Not so much like a parallax, more like the monitor was a window and there were things through it. It looks the same as what the card effect looks like.

Hi ! I think that what you saw is also based on the stencil buffer, but perhaps the main difference here is the use of the URP which allows you to add stencil parameters on any rendered material. However, I agree it might be annoying to set up, so if you're only using hand-written shaders (shader graphs doesn't count), you can add these stencil behaviours way more easily. Does it answer your question? x)

@@pixtrick Thanks! Yes, that answers it:)

Hey there ! You just have to disable shadow casting in the mesh renderer

Okay, and if I want to cast just when it is enabled and then when it is masked, disable it ?@@pixtrick

@@ninocoillard6775 when you say enabled, do you mean when you can see through the door or do you have something that enables or disables the view through the door ?

I'll try !

Hello there ! What unity version do you use ?

@@pixtrick22.3.15f1. Also made that line fix you mentioned in the pinned comment

Hey! Thanks for the comment and the kind words I appreciate that! Now, about your question, I don't really think there's a real workaround for that, since the shadow caster pass uses the vertex data to draw shadows. Since the fake geometry created by the stencil buffer is not an actual geometry (I mean it is not some vertex data, it's just pixels on screen), the shadow caster pass cannot render there properly. Then, I don't really see any workaround for keeping the ground shadows while not rendering them into a hole. Now, if you really need your ground shadow (I assume it would be for like a platformer game or something), I would suggest not to use the stencil buffer unless you're really forced to. Use real geometries as much as you can. I think this is not (or maybe it is but it would be such a pain regarding performance) possible to draw shadows pixel by pixel, so that the shadows are not rendered into the hole but are rendered for the ground, but that is absolutely not reasonable. May I ask you what you are trying to achieve? Maybe there's a workaround in your situation and I would be glad to help :) Have a great day !

​@@pixtrickThanks so much for the reply :) I think, I figured out two possible solutions by now but either way it sucks a bit that this is so exhausting to do. Beware this will be a long text, thanks for letting me rubberduck a bit. It is in fact not a plattformer, rather an isometric adventure type of game. I am making this example up but the situation is basically like this. Imagine a hill and ground mesh with a meteor crater on top. The crater is the hole I would like to stencil out. I can not build this right into the mesh because it is procedurally placed. Inside the crater I have a plane which reads the depth texture to create some fog-ish dust. Issue 1: Shadows of the hill are drawn without the stencil cutout hence everything in the crater is shadowed. Turning of the shadows would mean no shadows in the surrounding area by the hill. Issue 2: the information in the depth texture is also wrong. This is a bit harder to explain and needed a bit of digging in the frame debugger and render pipeline. The Render objects feature only writes to the cameras color target. The color target contains a depth channel but it is only used when certain conditions are met. For example in the game view, if depth priming is disabled and nothing else forces a depth pre pass (like ssao in depthNormals mode). The scene view always uses a depth pre pass not matter what we do. When we remove the ground from the regular render loop and only render it through render objects it is completely removed from the depth pre pass because the render objects feature does not set that up and the mask definition that we have set excludes it from ALL main passes (except for shadows...). I wonder why this isn't done in the render feature but that I guess that this is the reason why the feature still says experimental. Unity didnt figure out a way to make it compatible with any possible srp renderer. This is an issue what the typical "hey draw the characters silhouette" tutorials don't have because they draw the character in the regular loop too. As for solutions, one option I can make work is not using stencils at all. Render everything in the main loop, set the queue for ground materials to 1990 and create a depth mask shader + material that overwrites the depth where it is rendered with infinitely far away. Then everything that is rendering afterwards renders as usual and even shadows are correct (because the shadow passes use the depth only passes of the shaders too). The other solution is to modify the render objects feature to also create a depth pre pass or inject the missing draw calls into the existing pass with the correct stencil renderblock set and render the stencil render objects feature extremely early (before pre passes). Second solution is more flexible / cleaner and actually allows using the stencil buffer fully but it is much more work. I am at the point where stuff renders in the depth pass but not with stencils yet. I guess my issue here is simply summarized with: Render Objects does not work with depth pre pass, stencil in render objects does not work with shadows in URP, but it could, unity just didn't finish it yet 😕.

Hmmm your thinking process might be good, but I think there's a much simpler solution for such a problem. Basically, your problem is : how to generate a hole in a procedurally generated terrain. To me, this is much simpler than having to deal with depth pre passes and everything, plus it would be much more cleaner. As I said before, you have to use real geometries as much as you can, and only use the stencil buffer when it's needed. To me, you shouldn't use the stencil buffer at all for this problem since the crater will not move in your scene (I mean I assume it won't move). I don't know how you generate your terrain and how it should look, but I think you should use techniques such as the wave function collapse that allows you to design "tiles" that you can put together in numerous ways. That way, you can keep a procedurally generated terrain and would only have to make a tile where there is the crater. If you still really want to use the stencil buffer, well don't xD I cannot really help since I think it would feel broken ether way. Still, it was extremely interesting to read your different solutions, but yeah to me you should change your approach to this problem. Hope that helps !

Thank you so much !

You're welcome :D

Definitely yeah, I didn't talk about the UV mapping either but that was not the sake of the video

@@pixtrick i feel the focus more on the stencil aspect was more important imo. And yet there's still a lot that i dont know about stencils like the satuates and wraps. This at least should help many get a decwnt understanding

I think there would be a way to use the stencil buffer in hdrp, but I don't know how honestly (i mean without having to hard code it in a shader)

You're not the first one to tell me that actually x) I'll definitely check other musics for my future videos

Thank you so much :D

I'll see. I have a lot of work IRL and a big project at the same time

It is indeed possible but you'll then have to procedurally generate a concave mesh that fits the hole geometry. I'll maybe make a video on that later since it's very interesting but quite advanced too

Thanks for these kind words :D

You're 100% right. When I made this video, my goal was more about trying to understand the concepts instead of actually teaching things. I apologize for that. Now, I really want to go deeper in the explanations and I'm currently working towards that. I will probably share a video about a more elegant way to do this, using shaders only and not the shader graph. Anyways, I'm aware I'm not a professional, but I swear I really try to improve ;)

@@pixtrick I'm sorry too tbh I get your video now! For the last 5 days I've been trying hard to understand SRP and Shader Graph, and most of the videos were too superficial to understand, and it was really frustrating because I couldn't even get the simplest things to work (like Sobel Convolution). For example, I didn't know how to use a custom HLSL function in Shader Graph, etc. I still don't know how to place your passes using C# with seems super boiler code heavy etc. After watching countless online tutorials, blog posts, etc... I finally feel a little more proficient. Udemy with holistic3D in particular has helped me. Your video is fine, but also not for total beginners like I was, who know how to program shaders and the math, but nothing about how to do it in SRP or HDRP The custom function you use is a standard procedure, but it doesn't work in HDRP, which is what I used! I didn't find that out until later, so I was pissed about the non-standalone part. Also not your fault. So I feel bad, you did your best to teach some concepts for free, but spending hours on it and not understanding why something doesn't work really bugged me.. My only suggestion would be that when you make a video, please don't leave anything out (like checking a bool on etc), so make it exactly like this video, but maybe explain more intermediate steps (like what exactly is shadow attentuation etc). Cheers!

I appreciate the time and effort you put in your comment ! But yeah, learning these things is super complex because of the amount of "tutorials" (mine included ngl) that do not cover the basics. I'm really trying to do so in my more recent videos, but this one is one of my firsts, so yeah, mistakes were made, sorry for that. Thanks for your honesty by the way, it motivates me a lot to make better content :D

Hey, thanks for your comment ! This is basically due to how the effect is made in shader graph, so I'm afraid there's no real solution for that. The only thing I found was to increase the intensity of the base color to 1, but that's so ugly in my opinion ... I'll try to make another video about a cleaner approach to get this effect, stay tuned !

@@pixtrick I will ! Thanks a lot for taking time answering. That's what I was thinking after a lot of tweaking. At least it gives me an opportUnity to be a little bit more at ease with shadergraphe basics. For now, i've just put asside the idea of having hatch texture based shadows. However, with only the simple shadows, the effect stays pretty convincing to me. Thanks again for the good work!

@@arthurfoucault7358 you're welcome ! Nice pun by the way xD

Hehe i made a tutorial about this if you wonder how it works ;)