v6.4.0 Dev 9

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📖 Dev Branch Documentation 📖

This is a release candidate. Everything goes well - this version will go live as the final v6.4.0

Changes since Dev 8

• Gradient editor now correctly handles "Fixed" blending mode. Thanks @lackofbindings for the fix!
• Dissolve now has configurable Cutoff Range with adjusted defaults. Thanks @lackofbindings for the suggestion!
• Clouds shader normal recalculation has been drastically improved by using an in-shader bilinear filtering implementation (instead of relying on the 8-bit hardware version)

6.4.0 Changelog

Summary

Update 6.4.0 brings a plethora of new features, improvements, and bugfixes. There is no particular focus in this update. Please enjoy!

New Shaders

• PBR
  • Hotspotting: An auto-hotspotting shader that can be used to quickly set up reusable hotspot materials

New Features

• 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.

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!

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!

Full Changelog: v6.3.0...v6.4.0-dev.9