Material effect recipes

Dissolve / reveal

Compare a stable mask/noise field with a scalar threshold. Use Masked blend when a hard clipped edge is acceptable. Derive a narrow edge band from the threshold difference for emissive/color. Expose threshold, edge width, edge color/intensity, and coordinate controls. Test temporal aliasing, shadows, depth, and bounds if WPO accompanies the dissolve.

Hit flash / selection pulse

Drive a scalar/vector parameter from gameplay on the owning material instance or primitive data. Blend a bounded tint/emissive contribution over the existing surface. Restore/default the value explicitly; do not continuously create new dynamic instances.

UV panning / flow

Use Time and Panner (or equivalent math) with parameterized direction and speed. Keep units and coordinate space explicit. For networked cosmetic effects, synchronize an event/start time only when visual phase agreement matters.

Triplanar/world-aligned texture

Blend projections by surface normal for assets lacking suitable UVs or for consistent world scale. It increases texture samples; reserve it for surfaces where seams or authoring cost justify it.

Foliage wind

Apply WPO weighted by vertex mask, keeping attachment points stable. Parameterize amplitude and frequency, then test bounds, shadow stability, LOD transitions, and worst-case instance counts.

Distance/quality reduction

Remove the cost that matters: texture reads, per-pixel layers, expensive math, or WPO. Quality switches produce additional permutations and are not simultaneous distance LODs. Verify with the material stats and on hardware rather than assuming the simpler-looking graph is faster.