Your comments
It's already reported, but yes, it's planned :)
Edit: This is now fixed in alpha 0.14
I see!
Ideally, the user shouldn't have to know about the whole Y/W thing, which is why I would prefer a DeriveNormalZ style node, which has a Vector2 input and a Vector3 normal. (Packed normals without Z goes in, unpacked normals with Z goes out)
Normal unpacking takes the Y and W channels of the texture, unpacks it to XYZ, calculating Z in the process.
A normal unpack node will most likely make things tricker for new users, as I don't think anyone would set up their nodes to generate an unpacked normal on the Green and Alpha channels.
How about simply having a DeriveNormalZ node, as in UDK?
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html#DeriveNormalZ
The main difference being that it works on X and Y instead of Y and W
I'm a bit torn, what are your thoughts?
Got an example case where it would simplify things a lot?
The instruction counter has been broken for a long time; but it is now fixed in Alpha 0.14 :)
Not really, and it's most likely too expensive to calculate something like that in real-time in a shader, sadly. You'll have to do that offline/pre-render
The reflection node already acts that way, and there's another request already for real-time reflections, closing this :)
I'm not sure how the second shader was done! Seems quite advanced
Right - The reflection vector in UDK is the camera->normal reflection, which there is a node for in SF already :)
Have a look:
I'm a bit curious though - What exactly is the "Reflection texture" node in the center?
Customer support service by UserEcho
This has been reported several times before, and it's a known issue, which is of course planned to be fixed.
http://shaderforge.userecho.com/topic/271439-panning-or-time-relatet-stuff-only-works-with-shaderforge-window-open/
http://shaderforge.userecho.com/topic/249187-shaders-using-the-time-node-doesnt-animate-in-game/