unity question - strumpy shader editor?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by headcaseGames, Jun 25, 2013.

  1. headcaseGames

    headcaseGames Well-Known Member

    Jun 26, 2009
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    Mobile Game Developer
    Hollywood, CA
    I'm still kinda newb to unity, but it's going fairly well. started messing w the strumpy shader asset, which is not dissimilar to the node-based material editor in udk (which is awesome!) I'm getting the hang of it, but my hang-up is this - and it's a strumpy shader editor (SSE) - specific question I believe. Setting up nodes/etc all behaves like I'd expect it would. Now when I stick a 2D asset in there (bitmap of whatever nature) it shows up in the SSE preview window for the material. But when I export the mat to use in Unity - well, the shader shows up as I've arranged but all slots where external files were referenced apparently need to be re-input on the unity side. Any tutorial I have watched dances around this, but it seems strange and quite inefficient (esp where potentially more elaborate setups are concerned). Am I missing something, or is this just a limitation of the asset?
     
  2. ThreeCubes

    ThreeCubes Well-Known Member

    Oct 13, 2012
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    well its been a while since i used strumpy, i just began writing from scratch (or cutting and pasting bits from other shaders). but when i did use it i think the same thing happerned to me. i would have to drag in all the textures and normal maps again. it always seemed a bit hit and miss with strumpy and i thing there has been a few issues with unity 4. Have you posted the question on the unity forums?
     
  3. headcaseGames

    headcaseGames Well-Known Member

    Jun 26, 2009
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    Mobile Game Developer
    Hollywood, CA
    "on the unity forums" am I alone in forever having issues dealing with posting things on their forums? maybe karmically I just have some bad juju with all things unity related. I need to align my shakras. Something.

    Anyway I asked a few other places and it was explained to me that the SSE (strumpy) shaders should be considered akin to a master shader in unreal - instead of making specific per-object shaders, you are keeping memory down by making as few complex shaders as possible and then just plugging them into individual objects and connecting the relevant textures at that phase. It still scares me what that workflow could be like when things start getting complex (with node-based editors they usually will, quickly) but if there is a logical reason for that, and knowing how testy an engine like unity can be across all the platforms it must deploy, I can find such an argument acceptable.

    Still, if anyone can tell me otherwise, don't be shy :) It just seems odd that I've not heard it whined about elsewhere, if this is truly the case.
     
  4. ThreeCubes

    ThreeCubes Well-Known Member

    Oct 13, 2012
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    Well I've never posted on the unity forums, usually somebody's already asked the question I needed. Posts can get lost when the forum is really big.

    I was not that convinced that what strumpy was generating was particuly efficient. What kind of shaders are you writing?
     

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