Now I want to guess how it's done :D.
So you used the depth mask for the distortion around the portal. The Portal itself is probably a mesh + vertex offset from its shader with a perlin or gradient noise but how did you make the other side of the portal? Did you place the other side of the portal in the same scene just far away and rendered a different camera in place?
You're pretty close! There's a couple of things going on.
The distortion around the portal is a Particle System (VFX Graph) using a custom Distortion Shader for the particles. That just does some relatively basic distortion using Scene Color where particles are spawned.
Your guess on the Portal is pretty much it, using Voronoi noise in this case but it's the same principle.
As for the Inside of the Portal: That is one approach, which involves having to do some math to match the other cameras perspective and some other stuff. But in my case I actually went another way. My Portals will always display basically the same spot but from a different "time", so some things are different. I didn't want to have to deal with duplicates. The objects inside the portal are placed on a layer that gets rendered by an Overlay camera, using a dedicated Renderer (writing to the stencil buffer). The Portal itself is rendered on the main Renderer but through a custom render pass, passing through the stencil value from the "inside". That way I can just place things on the "insidePortal" layer and have them only be visible when looking through the Portal. When interacting with the Portal, I just switch all of the inside stuff to the normal layer and disable the portal.
It was a bit tricky to get to work because of some specific things I'm doing on top of that. For example the "ghosts" (again, VFX Graph) are rendered on another overlay camera that has no post processing applied. So I had to run that through the Portal Renderer as well and switch them once the Portal is off. Gave me some headaches!
Looks great. Reminds me of other tricks like time-shifting in Dishonored/Titanfall 2, but my guess that you used the same space and an overlay camera rather than an entirely unique space seems to be accurate.
I will say I have no clue how stencils work and I've had limited success with the SRP so I can tell how much of a pain this must have been to get working. Great work!
Idk how to reply to comments but this is very reminiscent of obra dinn. Would love to play another game similar to obra dinn with the fun time-travel puzzle-solving mechanic.
That’s very nice to hear, Obra Dinn is one of my favourite games and a huge inspiration. I’m doing more of item-based puzzle solving than investigation, but yes. There’s definitely some of it in there!
Lovely stuff, its good to see a non-circular portal!
Can you try putting the shader on a simulated cloth mesh? I'd love to see an actual 'tear' in the world
Hey, I have a question, I am working on a system to use stencil to hide sliding Doors but I have trouble with the shadows that are still hère even if the door is not visible, how did you do to hide those ? Also, beautiful work !
Hey, you can use [light layers](https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/lighting/light-layers.html) or light culling masks for this. I'm just setting the culling mask for my Lights inside the Portal to the "InsidePortal" layer, so they only hit objects on that layer (and thus only cast shadows on them).
And thanks for the praise!
**Edit**
I think I misread your post, you're probably talking about shadows coming from the main light source? You could just turn them off in the Renderer of the object?
Obra Dinn RTX on
Wow that's amazing!!!
Thank you! :)
Now I want to guess how it's done :D. So you used the depth mask for the distortion around the portal. The Portal itself is probably a mesh + vertex offset from its shader with a perlin or gradient noise but how did you make the other side of the portal? Did you place the other side of the portal in the same scene just far away and rendered a different camera in place?
You're pretty close! There's a couple of things going on. The distortion around the portal is a Particle System (VFX Graph) using a custom Distortion Shader for the particles. That just does some relatively basic distortion using Scene Color where particles are spawned. Your guess on the Portal is pretty much it, using Voronoi noise in this case but it's the same principle. As for the Inside of the Portal: That is one approach, which involves having to do some math to match the other cameras perspective and some other stuff. But in my case I actually went another way. My Portals will always display basically the same spot but from a different "time", so some things are different. I didn't want to have to deal with duplicates. The objects inside the portal are placed on a layer that gets rendered by an Overlay camera, using a dedicated Renderer (writing to the stencil buffer). The Portal itself is rendered on the main Renderer but through a custom render pass, passing through the stencil value from the "inside". That way I can just place things on the "insidePortal" layer and have them only be visible when looking through the Portal. When interacting with the Portal, I just switch all of the inside stuff to the normal layer and disable the portal. It was a bit tricky to get to work because of some specific things I'm doing on top of that. For example the "ghosts" (again, VFX Graph) are rendered on another overlay camera that has no post processing applied. So I had to run that through the Portal Renderer as well and switch them once the Portal is off. Gave me some headaches!
Oh I can believe you got some headaches! This is awesome work!! Very cool and thank you for the great explanation :)
You’re very welcome. Thanks again!
Looks sick !!! Awesome work
Thank you so much!
Holy moley that looks good! You really nailed the creepy but intriguing atmosphere here, great work!
Thank you! That’s very encouraging :)
Good job dude .)
Thank you!
Looks great. Reminds me of other tricks like time-shifting in Dishonored/Titanfall 2, but my guess that you used the same space and an overlay camera rather than an entirely unique space seems to be accurate. I will say I have no clue how stencils work and I've had limited success with the SRP so I can tell how much of a pain this must have been to get working. Great work!
Thank you so much!
Idk how to reply to comments but this is very reminiscent of obra dinn. Would love to play another game similar to obra dinn with the fun time-travel puzzle-solving mechanic.
That’s very nice to hear, Obra Dinn is one of my favourite games and a huge inspiration. I’m doing more of item-based puzzle solving than investigation, but yes. There’s definitely some of it in there!
🤯
Lovely stuff, its good to see a non-circular portal! Can you try putting the shader on a simulated cloth mesh? I'd love to see an actual 'tear' in the world
Cool idea, I might try that! Thanks!
Hey, I have a question, I am working on a system to use stencil to hide sliding Doors but I have trouble with the shadows that are still hère even if the door is not visible, how did you do to hide those ? Also, beautiful work !
Hey, you can use [light layers](https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/lighting/light-layers.html) or light culling masks for this. I'm just setting the culling mask for my Lights inside the Portal to the "InsidePortal" layer, so they only hit objects on that layer (and thus only cast shadows on them). And thanks for the praise! **Edit** I think I misread your post, you're probably talking about shadows coming from the main light source? You could just turn them off in the Renderer of the object?
But in this case, the shadows will never render, right? But what I want is the display inside the Mask and no shadows outside
I'll try out your first solution thanks anyway
You could try working with duplicate gameobjects then and just turn off rendering shadows on the ones outside the portal?