Your Triplanar is wrong. Here's how to make one that works. [UE5]

In this video we go through a correct implementation of the triplanar projection mapping technique for world mapping textures in our shaders.
We discuss it's properties, advantages and shortcomings. Then we build on that to create some new and better tech to fit it on the landscape material.
Download: jumpeter.gumroad.com/l/tri-pe...
Discord: / discord
Patreon: / visualtechart

[@simulacrumgames]

9:43 This is what real programming looks like 😆 Man I love watching people put in the effort to do stuff the *right* way!

[@theshuman100]

man got gaslit on what left and right was

[@TorQueMoD]

Damn! You must be the best shader programmer working in Unreal Engine right now! Well done sir!

[@Bestvegeta]

Best in depth explaination of tri planar and even beyond. I do not comment very often on youtube videos but this one is extremly well done.

[@Omnicrola]

Absolutely top-tier breakdown and explanation. Appreciate the time it took to not only figure out the penta and enna-planar techniques, but also the time to break it all down and show it.

[@ZappForThat]

Lol me sitting here doing the vector finger pointing bit, only to look back at my screen to see footage of you doing the same 😂 Thanks for adding that note-it helped me feel better abt not *just* knowing the math.

[@VisualTechArt]

We all struggle with that xD

[@DavidWKimber]

Came here to make pretty much the same comment haha

[@BooneyTune]

Modular c++ code

[@MichaelPohoreski]

9:33 The story of every graphics programmer. =P

[@retroman3252]

Ennplanar projection - Mind Blown

[@mlecz]

Fantastic Video ! It would be great if you could bring up the "seamless_scale" topic, which was created to bypass texture stretching issues on tessellation(or WPO) displacement surfaces. This has been implemented in the Valve 'Source' Engine since 2007, but in the Unreal Engine there is still no way to cope with texture stretching at high World Position Offset values. I think you are the right person to handle such a complex problem.

[@VisualTechArt]

It sounds interesting, even though I'm not sure of what you're referring to xD can you provide a resource for me to start the research from?

[@monicde4570]

@@VisualTechArt He is talking about Source Engine seamless_scale, a shader parameter for dealing with texture stretching issues on displacement. You can found in the developer valvesoftware wiki. But it is not a complete solution in some cases it's talked about in their wike Caveats.

[@NasteXify]

I really appreciate you posting these videos. There are so many small and big things that one can learn and apply, not only in the context of the video but also in other areas. This was incredibly helpful and informative, just like all your videos always are! The normal axis finger pointing thing, lol!

[@ricolasX]

Quite a coincidence, I was actually talking about triplanar in a meeting yesterday :D Greate video as usual :) Can't wait for part two!

[@IIStaffyII]

Amazing video as always! Good to see I'm not the only one that looks like that when trying to figure out vector math transformations.

[@scottcourtney8878]

Terrific video, and I especially applaud you for showing the setbacks and the debugging process. Software development is almost never monotonically forward. :)

[@codylavery356]

SUBSCRIBED!!! The combination of humor and teaching amazing stuuf is amazing Thank you for your work.

[@chaninja001]

Thank you so much for this! Everything looks so much better now. I can't believe I didn't realize how wrong it was before, I had an inkling but it seems like night and day now. Your knowledge, intelligence and generosity is very much admired and appreciated! Bravo!

[@ali.3d]

Absolutely love this in-depth tutorial, thank you mate!

[@piendrio]

Fantastic in depth explanation. I always learn a lot with your videos. Thanks, mate!

[@MonsterJuiced]

Incredible, I can't wait for the follow up video

[@KramGamesOfficial]

Dude you are amazing, youve done so many people such a huge favor and are changing the indie game dev community!

[@3D_TUTS]

Just discovered your channel, omg man you're godsent! You're an amazing teacher, thanks a lot!

[@sofialiguori4868]

Amazing visualisations!

[@Leo-Leus]

You, sir, are a sage and a saviour. Thank you very much!

[@Paimo]

been working on a scene that's heavily dependent on triplanar, this is great!

[@3DWithLairdWT]

I wrote a quaternion based normal baker to just avoid the whole conversion step at the cost of needing to use rgba in the "normal" map Was a fun exercise in learning quaternion math to replace matrix transofrmations Cool to see the mat solution!

[@samuelb.9314]

Amazing content, thanks !

[@TheRoyalSkies]

Hey awesome video, at 9:00 minutes though, how did you get the "world X Axis" and "World Y Axis" - I keep looking for them, but I can't seem to find it when creating nodes :(

[@VisualTechArt]

They're just Named Reroute Nodes of basic vectors :)

[@IbtesamSadiq]

Out of all the videos I’ve watched on triplanar mapping, this is the best tutorial. I am eagerly awaiting Part 2 on the assets pipeline. Could you please let me know when you will release the video on that?

[@VisualTechArt]

Thanks, I'm working on it, few more weeks to wait I think :)

[@phatzucchini2814]

You are amazing, this helped me out so much you have no idea!!! Amazing content!!!

[@VisualTechArt]

Glad to read that :)

[@snowy0110]

Thank you! I like to learn from you!

[@nintenjo64]

great video as ever, your the triplanar king! Looking forward to your video on Triplanar for assets as thats what i use it for the most. What annoys me the most is how the built in world space mapper from Epic is so flawed.. even the way it mixes the channels togther it ludicrously broken..

[@jkashaar]

Great breakdown!

[@JohnLogostini]

Yeah the fact everyone gets it working in crazy

[@stateofthefuck2089]

good explanation

[@MKinseyCreations]

Doing gods work

[@DrTheRich]

I remember struggeling so much a couple years ago with getting a triplanar brick texture with normalmap to look correctly. i never got it quite right. finally i understand why.

[@user-gd8mt8bm1e]

man i hope sequel comes soon, im starting to work on asset stuff this week

[@VisualTechArt]

You'll have to wait 2 more weeks minimum I'm afraid xD

[@user-gd8mt8bm1e]

@@VisualTechArt @12:12 iI didnt get the part with B,A mask.. how can you swizzle out B,A from vector 2?

[@timmygilbert4102]

Ben Golus wrote a solid article about it

[@gehtsiegarnixan]

Nice video! Your weights caculcation is way too complicated, just do contrast( abs( normals )), either smooth or straight contrast will do (demo is on shadertoy). Glad to see I'm not the only one suffering on the TBN Matrix. You can use a dithering to make the non blending transitions way smoother especally with TAA, which most have enabled anyway.

[@VisualTechArt]

That would work, It would be like stopping before normalizing the weights, which is not mandatory, but I like to have them balanced as it can be useful for other things too :) And yeah, I could have added dithering but there was already too much stuff in the video and also adds all the annoyance of dealing with ghosting, maybe I can do a follow-up with that!

[@onestepsolutions]

Thank you for your video, excellent explanation, I have a question about the Anisotropy (brushed metal) , it seems it is almost the same problem as the normal? how can we calculate the anisotropy in tri-planar? , wish you beautiful success with your chanell

[@VisualTechArt]

Thanks! :D Yes it does as it's based on the tangent vectors :) If you take the "Basis X" of the matrix in my shader you should already have them correct, not sure though, I would need to check

[@kenalpha3]

Thank you. How performant is this (the extra instructions if we put your MF in many of our Mats)? Im already doing 3 layer Vertex Paint + Triplanar. So I think Id need your MF on every (3) Texture layer that blends in [the code of] each Material.

[@VisualTechArt]

It has more stuff going on of course, but don't stress too much about it (and measure the performance of it in your game to actually see if that needs to be addressed). When you use multiple instances of the same MF the compiler will recognise that many nodes are the same and all giving you the same output, so it will optimize them and run only once ;)

[@AlphaBrox]

thank you very much, warlock! 15:10 - apparently I didn't understand something. why can't you use swizzle? there is 'swizzle' node in materials. you can also change the order of channels through the 'break float' or 'split components' and 'make float' nodes :) yeah, it's not a one node and no so minimal and concise like a custom expression, but 'make float' will reduce some your 'append' blocks :)

[@VisualTechArt]

Let's say it was a little excuse to show a little bit of HLSL :) Plus I try to avoid using UE's MFs where I can, both to show how things are done and also because you mitigate the risk of getting your shader broken in the future because they removed something from the library :D

[@AlphaBrox]

@@VisualTechArt oh, ok, I understand :)

[@DamienRamirez]

15:05 - So Sine in UE is not the same as Sine HLSL or Cosine reversed (1-) both of which are the same, which makes me Ask rather than question since I have forgotten the period value fix part... if the material is right & wouldn't a Cosine reversed (1-) be better here?

[@VisualTechArt]

I'm not sure I got all what you were thrying to say... Anyways: in HLSL the trigonometric functions are all in radians, while in UE's nodes you're forced to set a period length. In this case I set it to 4 because I just wanted the vector to rotate 90° with a parameter that goes from 0 to 1 :)

[@DamienRamirez]

@@VisualTechArt ah ok so you did set them. Best example of what I was saying is do a custom (HLSL) node & add sine to it. Then do a Sine node in unreal (dont set a period - use as is like most people...). Compare the result. The result is different. Now do a Cosine with a oneminus in unreal with nodes & compare that result, its result is the same as the HLSL sine. Meaning a Cosine & Sine used straight, no period setting give different results. Unsure when they plan to fix it.

[@MustafaBerkeGureltol]

Can you design a version where all 6 poles of the sphere will have an octagon instead of just 2?

[@VisualTechArt]

I could, I don't know if I will xD

[@nxgengames7739]

Can this work with parallax occlusion mapping? I've done one before but it required 6 samplers. :\

[@VisualTechArt]

Well for the POM you have to raymarch, so of course you need to sample multiple times... I guess that since here we recompute the basis POM can work properly, not sure if you need to recompute everything at each step, which would make the shader super expensive :)

[@roadtoenviromentartist]

Ben Cloward explained this theme 3 years ago.. The great problem is when you´re using this triplanar projection in a model with animation and you must preskinned position to maintain the projection material in the right position.. I can´t explain more by here writting you but when you try apply this projection and you must correct after the texture the direction of the normals with preskinned materials and not with vertex normal ws then you´ll discover all the problems (not is valid work with vertex interpolator node) . Try this challenge dear guy and youll discover the problems when you´re working them).. THIS IS THE REAL CHALLENGE GUY.. Have you a technical solutions to this problem?.. I respect you but I would like watch you explaining solutions to other level. I follow during lot years I know that you´re a great profesional with a level similar to render bucket channel (with awesome contents). Answer me if you consider this hard question interesting.. (I must apologize you because not writte english right.) Thank´s you guy for your contents..

[@VisualTechArt]

Ok but keep calm xD That will most likely be addressed in the follow up, where I'll show what needs to be done to fit the tech to assets :)

[@kevincantrell6295]

Any ETA on how to use this with Models and not Landscape?

[@VisualTechArt]

Next video, few weeks to wait still :)

[@MrCsapotamas]

9:30 ... Why is it so familiar?

[@VisualTechArt]

Multiple wrist and shoulder dislocations while trying to apply the right hand rule

[@MrCsapotamas]

@@VisualTechArt I can draw the landscape visible from my window from memory...

[@marijanfabris9983]

But wait, is there a sharp transition between projections or not?

[@VisualTechArt]

On the single sample version, yes

[@marijanfabris9983]

@@VisualTechArt if anyones interested, theres a video where guy blends it with SS dithering.. I wonder if one could blend it further using fwidth

[@marijanfabris9983]

I dont get it. We can constantly see enormous stretching at the bottom of the sphere. How come you avoid adressing this?

[@VisualTechArt]

Because the landscape doesn't have a bottom part :)

[@marijanfabris9983]

​@@VisualTechArtyeah it crossed my mind thats no issue since its the terrain use case example. Really looking forward to the sequel

[@ethanwasme4307]

How is that possible? Because people regurgitate the same tutorials xD You'll start to see your method leeched too :P

[@VisualTechArt]

Sad truth xD

[@_D3adB0y_]

UE has a hidden node called PerturbNormals. Could just use that at the end to convert a simple height map to normals instead of dealing with broken normals

[@VisualTechArt]

I don't know about this node but I didn't go too fancy with this and stick to the topic :D I did something similar in my previous video "The Only Texture a Game Needs" :)