Camera forward vector in shader

Question

Is there an easy way to get the camera's forward vector in a surface shader (the near clip plane's normal)? Perhaps a built-in shader constant or input struct variable? I want something like the "viewDir" variable from here, but just the forward vector, not a ray per-pixel.

I'm trying to do some calculations off pixel distances projected onto the near clipping plane's normal instead of the distance from the camera position.

Answer 1

Answer by moosefetcher · Sep 22, 2016 at 10:07 AM

I know it's 5 years later on from the original question, but the solution mentioned in the comments above worked for me too. I put this in my frag function and it works perfectly:

 float3 viewDir = UNITY_MATRIX_IT_MV[2].xyz;

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Answer 2

Answer by rcabot · May 18, 2018 at 02:21 PM

For those of you still attempting to use moosefetcher's answer, I tried this in my vertex shader and it messed with my lighting for some reason.

In the end I used float3 forward = mul((float3x3)unity_CameraToWorld, float3(0,0,1)); which worked fine.

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Camera forward vector in shader

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