Combining Fresnel with Distortion shader

Question

Hy there. I am making a explosion shockwave. Since a shockwave is nothing more than compressed air bending the light, a distortion shader would be perfect for this effect. I discovered the Dvornik-Distortion shader which is very good, but is uses a texture map as the distortion input. So I got the idea to combine a Fresnel calculation, generate a B&W texture and feed it into the distortion texture input. But the problem is: I have no funcking clue how to write shaders.... So I was wondering if someone could help me out on this one :)

Well Maybe a picture could help out explain what the problem is:

alt text

A texturemap would only work from a specific point of view. But a fresnel would always give the desired result.

Link to the distortion shader

Answer 1

Answer by isaidkrankify · Aug 21, 2021 at 03:46 AM

For anyone coming to this post in the future, you may be looking for the Spherize node. This is the result of a quick distortion shader setup: A distortion shader bulges the pixels on the edges of the circular plane.

The Spherize node warps the UV into a spherical shape. If you invert the scale, you can invert the effect. Here's my node setup: A Spherize node with a strength of 500 set by a Float input node, which is plugged into the UV input of a Tiling And Offset node with a Tiling value set to -1 via another Float input node. This is then plugged into the Distortion input of the Fragment node.

This Spherize node has a strength value of 500 which is set by plugging a Float input node into the strength input of the Spherize node. Set the strength to whatever works for you; my project requires the object to be very close to the camera.

Next, plug the UV output of the Spherize node into a Tiling And Offset node, then set the Tiling to -1 using another Float input node. This inverts the bulge and scales it, too.

Remember to turn on "Distortion" in your Graph Inspector window in the node editor! Enable "Distortion Only."

image-2021-08-20-204155.png (29.4 kB)

image-2021-08-20-204345.png (104.9 kB)

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Combining Fresnel with Distortion shader

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