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Hi everyone,

I'm working on an isometric game with pre-rendered backgrounds and 3D characters.

Some of the props from the render will be brought into the scene and rendered invisible, but they will occlude the player to create the illusion that they're walking behind the object in the render. I also want the player to cast a shadow onto the invisible object.

Are these things possible with Amplify, and would anybody know how I might go about achieving them?

Thanks!

Hello, thank you for your interest!

ASE allows you to build nearly all types of shaders, even custom ones through shader templates providing that you have advanced shader knowledge.

How exactly are the invisible objects occluding the player? Can you share an image or video for a similar example?
Transparency and shadows are quite complex to deal with, so we'll need to see an example of the effect you're looking for in order to provide more information.

Thanks for getting back to me.

Here's an image that shows the way I'm setting up spaces:
[img]https://imgur.com/VkX2hva[/img]

I build the scene and render the backgrounds in 3DS Max, then the Max model is imported in Unity at the same coordinates.

I have a backplate aligned to the Max camera that will have the background as an unlit material in Unity. The mesh currently has a shader somebody made for me that occludes the player and receives dynamic shadows, but is otherwise invisible showing only the backplate behind it giving the illusion that it's 3D.

It's an odd setup but allows for very quick iteration and pixel perfect occlusion without messing around with masks. I'd love to be able to replicate the shader in Amplify if possible. I'm very new to shaders so not too sure where to begin.

If it's a Standard Surface shader, you will likely be able to replicate it through ASE as it generates surface shaders, if it's a custom type, however, you'd have to look into our Shader Templates system, which allows you to create custom shader types, with the exception of geometry shaders.

Unfortunately, shader conversion is outside of the scope of our support, so we won't be able to assist with that.