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

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
• 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 turn off passing normal maps to the GSAA calculation. This can help avoid a "pixelation" effect on high frequency normal maps.
• 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.

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
• 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.

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.