Fake Blur Ideas for Unity Indie

An article by mgear    No Comments

Lets say we have a single colored mesh like in the image above and we want to blur it (with unity indie..)..

Ideas to try:

1. Glow effect shader? (no glow in indie..but can have something similar, doesnt work with planes yet..)
2. Take screenshot of the mesh, blur that image, use it as a texture on a plane..?
3. Create special border geometry to the mesh & use vertex alpha?
4. Duplicate the mesh few times, scale the copies bit bigger each, use particle or transparent shader?
5. Texture map the mesh with blurred texture (that fades to transparent), might need to add “padding” on borders first to match the original size?
6. Trail renderer?  http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Trail_Arc_Renderer
7. Use fake motion blur or modify from it? http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/96487-Motion-Blur-on-the-non-pro-v-of-unity
8. Draw GL.lines on mesh borders? (set some fading colors..kind of an extrude..?)
9. Try this from asset store? If it works, then this would be easy solution! http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/109139-Image-Effects-for-Unity-FREE
10. Use fake godrays shader? (your mesh would be plane, with the U shape as a texture..actually then it would be the same just to blur the texture)
11. Use modified Fur shader?
12. ..

(Only few of those would work, if we need to adjust the blur on the fly.. )

Details:

(1) : Glow effect shader

• Shader
• Realtime adjustable amount/range & color
• Doesnt work with planes yet..

(3) : Create special border geometry to the mesh & use vertex alpha

• Create extra geometry on the mesh borders
• Set new border vertice alpha to transparent
• Use some vertex color with alpha shader : http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=AlphaVertexColor
• Works quite nicely
• <- Unity screenshot – click image to view full size (ps. the fade/”blur” should be outer, not inner, its just a quick test..)

(more later..)

(11) : Use modified Fur shader

• I guess its quite heavy with multiple passes..
• Test image, works with planes:
• (click to view full size)