GeometryBeam Shader
Overview
This shader deals with the fake beams manually placed by artists and level designers.
Setup
Assign "GeometryBeam" shader to your specified material. In this article we'll be using a simple square solid shape to show the setup.
Assign a texture to the Diffuse texture slot:
| Simple grey texture | Colored macbeth chart texture |
|---|
You can also use a texture in the Specular slot to add a dust effect:
| CRYENGINE logo texture | PerlinNoise3D texture |
|---|
A Bump map can also be applied to customize the turbulence appearance.
| Without bumpmap | With noisy black/white texture | With interlaced DDN texture |
|---|
Several lighting options are available to tweak such as brightness and ambience strength.
| Ambience Strength 0.12 / Brightness 1 | Ambience Strength 10 / Brightness 1 | Ambience Strength 10 / Brightness 32 |
|---|
Start and End color options gives you control over the overall color as well as blending. Make sure you use 255,255,255 Diffuse color in the base material setup.
| Start/End Color = 0,255,0 | Start/End Color = 0,255,0 / 255,0,0 |
|---|
Shader Parameters
Shader Params | Description | Shader Gen Option |
|---|---|---|
Ambience Strength | General strength of the beam effect. Default is 0.12. | Default |
Base UV Scale | Control the scale/tiling of the base UV mapping for the object. | Default |
Brightness | Control the overall brightness of the beam effect. | Default |
Dust Anim Speed | Control the animation speed for the dust turbulence effect (specular map). | Dust Turbulence |
Dust UV Rotation | Change the rotation of the dust turbulence effect (specular map). | Dust Turbulence |
Dust UV Scale | Set the scale/tiling of the UV mapping for the dust turbulence effect (specular map). Default is 0.6. | Dust Turbulence |
End Color | The end color for gradient along U axis. | Default |
Soft intersection factor | Controls softness of surface interaction with other opaque scene geometry. | Default |
Start Color | The start color for gradient along U axis. | Default |
Turbulence Speed | Multiplier for turbulence (bumpmap) | Dust Turbulence |
Turbulence Visibility | Controls the visibility level of turbulence against the normal dust (bumpmap). Default is 0.55. | Dust Turbulence |
UV Vignetting | Apply a vignetting effect on the edges of the UV map. Default is 4. | UV vignetting |
Vertex Alpha Fading | If you use vertex alpha to fade out the edges, this slider enables you to control the interpolation curve. Default is 0.55. | Default |
View dependency factor | Controls the blending in and out depending on the facing angle to the camera. Default is 2. | Default |
Volumetric Scale | Controls the volumetric features when shadow receiving is enabled. Effectively this changes the soft shadow radius as well. Default is 0.7. | Receiving sun shadows |
Shader Generation Parameters
Shader Gen Option | Description |
|---|---|
Dust turbulence | Enables dust and turbulence overlay. Specular and bump map slots control dust and turbulence's appearance respectively. |
Receiving sun shadows | Enable this flag to let sun shadows be cast on the light beams, creating volumetric shafts. Can be used for interesting effect. (NB: Costly performance) |
UV vignetting | Enable vignette in UV space. |