Make a shader ignore specific objects

xyz

Devkure Use less detailed meshes for foliage.

Devkure

xyz I will try using something with smaller polycount later and let you know if that helped, thank you!

xyz

Devkure It may not be polycount per se but in fact the amount of details in general (i.e. the transparency texture). Hard to tell from your screenshots. It's not really clear what that bush is made of.

In general, you have two options. Either adjust the design/geometry of your meshes so they lend themselves to visually pleasing outline rendering, or render outlined and non-outlined things into separate viewports and do a depth-composite. The former is technically much less troublesome with potentially much better looking end result.

Devkure

xyz

The scene is also populated with grass, a lot of instances. Dont remember the exact number, but perhaps around over 30k (multi-mesh component).

The Bush in itself is, as much as i remember - composed of only quads. I will check the exact count when i lay my hands on pc (sorry and thank you for your patience 🙏) but i'm pretty sure its not a ridiculously huge polycount.

"Amount of details in general" - i understand it as, if i have a ton of objects on the scene, this issue may appear?

I will post more screenshots and info soon

xyz

Devkure My point is that it may not be a technical issue, but purely visual. If you have many leaves it the bush, and look at it from the distance, each leaf will be tiny and get a pixel-wide outline, creating a visual mess.

There still may be technical issues with normals though as the outline shader uses them.

So first make sure that your geometry is clean and adequate for this post processing effect.

Devkure

xyz AFAIK - this shader is of "billboarding" type. Its a texture of leafs slapped on some mesh. I will check out if it works on Simple shapes like a cube.

Devkure

xyz Okay, so i have recorded how it looks in the engine:

I will further try to fiddle around with the foliage mesh and such, or maybe even try my luck with the outline shader. The current foliage mesh is this blob in the end.

Thats the 3d object as seen in blender:
![

The polycount is a bit high, but as i said - i dont know much about shaders, thats why i dont wanna make any assumptions...

xyz

Devkure Yeah the post processing shader might not play nice with billboards. For debugging, you can try to render the normal texture directly onto the screen to see how billboards appear there. Also try to billboard a simple shape texture, e.g. a single circle, to see if it gets outlined correctly.

Devkure

xyz Update. I have tried another outline shader, by reducing normal and depth thresholds respectively i was able to replicate the effect. Seems like the best course of actionwould be to separate these effects. You have mentioned previously that it can be achieved with separating it into two different subviewports? Correct? "render outlined and non-outlined things into separate viewports and do a depth-composite". Can you please expand on that idea? As of right now i have everything placed in a subviewport, that is placed in SubViewportContainer with "Stretch" on and "Stretch Shrink" set to three (to imitate pixelart)

xyz

Devkure What happens if you don't put a transparent texture on the bush?

Devkure

xyz Pretty much the same effect. It goes black at certain angles and distance. I think im sure its because of the outline shader, because i tried putting a different one in its place - and it worked fine (although, the effect isnt as nice as this one...)

xyz

Devkure by reducing normal and depth thresholds respectively

Why not just adjust those thresholds to give acceptable results?

Devkure

xyz i tried fiddling around with that, unfortunately with no effect... The outline is messing the bushes up making them look weird, unfortunately - and if i reduce too much, then outline isnt looking too well on objects i actually want outlined. Is rendering in two different viewports so the effects dont overlap too hard to do?

Devkure

xyz Update!
The issue was connected to transparency.

I fixed it by setting up the render priority on the material to 1.

Now the only question is, how can i separate other potential objects, like grass, to not be outlined. ![

xyz

Devkure I'd avoid rendering this in two viewports. The way to go is to adjust the bush asset and/or its shader so that outline shader renders it nicely.

Devkure

xyz Thing is i dont necessarily want outline to render on everything... Imho the foliage would look far better with no visual border (outline), the same goes for any kind of grass and whatnot. My question is, if its troublesomesome to render it separately. If not viewports - is there any other way to separate the two, for instance - having the outline only attached to the building or any other kind of object (maybe attached to the material of said object?)

xyz

Devkure Render them after the post filter is applied and use the depth texture to discard obscured pixels. You'll have to maintain the camera clone for the second render.