Unity3D, round the edges of a box, cube?

unity3d shader bump-mapping
Fattie picture Fattie · Aug 1, 2014 · Viewed 9k times · Source

What's the usual way to round the edges on a cube, a rectangular object as in the examples?

enter image description here enter image description here

The ideal result would look pretty much exactly like these images.

(Naturally, you could literally use a mesh that has carefully rounded edges and corners, but it takes many tris to achieve that.)

Note, of course for a NON-shader approach...

enter image description here

Add two small flat boxes and simply make that new normal halfway, i.e., 45 degrees, between the two sides:

enter image description here

That would be drawn perfectly round ...

GDG below has provided an article where someone asserts that this is indeed the best way, if not using a shader approach.

I'm really wondering how to do this with a shader though.

Note - incredibly detailed tutorial on the non-shader approach

http://catlikecoding.com/unity/tutorials/rounded-cube/

Answer

game development germ picture game development germ · Aug 4, 2014

Using deferred shading you may access G-buffer to locate and round edges like it done in this paper. Though it is a post-processing technique so it is able to emulate roundness in a limits of some pixels.

enter image description here

Simple averaged normals (1 pixel width):

enter image description here

Simple averaged normals (2 pixel width):

enter image description here

Simple averaged normals (3 pixel width):

enter image description here

Related questions

Unity3D - Shader for sprite clipping

I am trying to create a shader that can be used to clip 2D sprites in a game, I found this shader in another question Shader "Sprites/ClipArea" { Properties { _MainTex ("Base (RGB), Alpha (A)", 2D) = "white" {} _Length ("Length", Range(0.0, 1.0)) = 1.0 _Width ("…

Read More
how to set a boolean property in unity3d CGprogram shader?

I am writing a shader for unity3d and I want to specify the properties of the shader in i.e like - Shader "GraphicsQuality/MediumScan" { Properties { _Color ("Main Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1) _SpecColor ("Specular Color", Color) = (0.5,0.5,0.5,1) _Shininess ("Shininess", Range (0.01, 1)) = 0.078125 _MainTex ("Base (…

Read More
Using shader for Camera render in Unity

I've written a shader and it works fine when I added it in a plane located in front of camera (in this case camera does not have shader). but then I add this shader to the camera, it does not …

Read More