my shader is ignoring my worldspace height - unity3d

Question

Im VERY new to shaders so bear with me. I have a mesh that I want to put a sand texture on below a worldspace position y of say 10 else it should be a grass texture. Apparantly it seems to be ignoring anything I put in and only selecting the grass texture. Something IS happening because my vert and tris count explodes with this function, compared to if I just return the same texture. I just dont see anything no matter what my sandStart value is
this is in my frag function:
if (input.positionWS.y < _SandStart) {
return tex2D(_MainTex, input.uv)* mainLight.shadowAttenuation;
} else {
return tex2D(_SandTex, input.uv) * mainLight.shadowAttenuation;
}
Is there also a way I can easily debug some of the values?

Answer 1

Please note that the OP figured out that their specific problem wasn't caused by the code in the question, but an error in their geometry function, this answer is only about the question "Is there a way to debug shader values" as this debugging method helped the OP find the problem
Debugging shader code can be quite a challenging task, depending on what it is you need to debug, and there are multiple approaches to it. Personally the approach I like best is using colours.
if we break it down there are three aspects in your code that could be faulty:
the value of input.positionWS.y
the if statement (input.positionWS.y < _SandStart)
Returning your texture return tex2D(_MainTex, input.uv)* mainLight.shadowAttenuation;
Lets walk down the list and test each individually.
checking if input.positionWS.y actually contains a value we expect it to contain. To do this we can set any of the RGB channels to its value, and just straight up returning that.
return float4(input.positionWS.y, 0, 0, 1);
Now if input.positionWS.y isn't a normalized value (a.k.a a value that ranges from 0 to 1) this is almost guaranteed to just return your texture as entirely red. To normalize it we divide the value by its max value, lets take max = 100 for the exmaple.
return float4(input.positionWS.y / 100, 0, 0, 1);
This should now make the texture full red at the top (where input.positionWS.y / 100 would be 1) and black at the bottom (where input.positionWS.y / 100 is zero), and a gradient from black to full red inbetween. (Note that since its a position in world space you may need to move the texture up/down to see the colour shift). If this doesn't happen, for example it always stays black or full red then your issue is most likely the input.positionWS.y.
The if statement. It could be that your statement (input.positionWS.y < _SandStart) always returns either true or false, meaning it'll never split. We can test this quite easily by commenting out the current return texture, and instead just return a flat colour like so:
if(input.positionWS.y < _SandStart)
{
return float4(1,0,0,1);
}
else
{
return float4(0,0,1,1);
}
if we tested the input.positionWS.y to be correct in step 1, and _SandStart is set correctly we should see the texture be divided in parts red (if true) and the other part blue (if false) (again since we're basing off world position we might need to change the material's height a bit to see it). If this division in colours doens't happen then the likely cause is that _SandStart isn't set properly, or to an incorrect value. (assuming this is a property you can inspect its value in the material editor)
if both of above steps yield the expected result then return tex2D(_MainTex, input.uv)* mainLight.shadowAttenuation; is possibly the culprit. To debug this we can return one of the textures without the if statement and shadowAttenuation, see if it applies the texture, and then return the other texture by changing which line is commented.
return tex2D(_MainTex, input.uv);
//return tex2D(_SandTex, input.uv);
If each of these textures gets applied properly seperately then it is unlikely that that was your cause, leaving either the shadowAttenutation (just add the multiplication to the above test) or something different altogether that isn't covered by the code in your question.
bonus round. If you got a shader property you want to debug you can actually do this from C# as well using the material.Get<type> function (the supported types can be found in the docs here, and include the array variants too, as well as both Get and Set). a small example:
Properties
{
_Foo ("Foo", Float) = 2
_Bar ("Bar", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
}
can be debugged from C# using
Material mat = getComponent<Material>();
Debug.LogFormat("_Foo value: {0}", mat.GetFloat("_Foo"); //prints 2
Debug.LogFormat("_Bar value: {0}", mat.GetFloat("_Bar"); //prints (1,1,1,1)