unity-game-engineshaderbump-mapping

Unity3D, round the edges of a box, cube?

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

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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...

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

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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/

Solution

  • 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.

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    Simple averaged normals (1 pixel width):

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    Simple averaged normals (2 pixel width):

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    Simple averaged normals (3 pixel width):

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