How to draw circle in unity by shader and anti-aliasing

Question

I have drawn a circle by shader, but I can't get anti-aliasing to work.

I tried finding an answer here http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/521984/how-do-you-draw-2d-circles-and-primitives.html, but I have to use discard to draw circle.

Here is a picture of my current shader result and the shader code:

Shader "Unlit/CircleSeletor"
{
Properties
    {
        _BoundColor("Bound Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
        _BgColor("Background Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
        _MainTex("Albedo (RGB)", 2D) = "white" {}
        _BoundWidth("BoundWidth", float) = 10
        _ComponentWidth("ComponentWidth", float) = 100
    }
SubShader{
Pass
            {
            Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
            CGPROGRAM
            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag Lambert alpha
            // make fog work
            #pragma multi_compile_fog
            #include "UnityCG.cginc"
            sampler2D _MainTex;
            float _BoundWidth;
            fixed4 _BoundColor;
            fixed4 _BgColor;
            float _ComponentWidth;
            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };
            struct v2f
            {
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
                UNITY_FOG_COORDS(1)
                float4 vertex : SV_POSITION;
            };
            float4 _MainTex_ST;
            v2f vert(appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.vertex = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
                o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
                UNITY_TRANSFER_FOG(o,o.vertex);
                return o;
            }
            float antialias(float w, float d, float r) {
                    return 1-(d-r-w/2)/(2*w);
            }
            fixed4 frag(v2f i) : SV_Target
            {
                fixed4 c = tex2D(_MainTex,i.uv);
                float x = i.uv.x;
                float y = i.uv.y;
                float dis = sqrt(pow((0.5 - x), 2) + pow((0.5 - y), 2));
                if (dis > 0.5) {
                    discard;
                } else {
                    float innerRadius = (_ComponentWidth * 0.5 - _BoundWidth) / _ComponentWidth;
                    if (dis > innerRadius) {
                        c = _BoundColor;
                        //c.a = c.a*antialias(_BoundWidth, dis, innerRadius);
                    }
                    else {
                        c = _BgColor;
                    }
                }
                return c;
            }
            ENDCG
            }
}
}

Answer 1

It's really easy to apply anti-alias to a circle.

1.First, you need 3 variables to do this. Get the radius, distance of the circle. Also create a float value(let's called that borderSize) that can be used to determine how far the anti-alias should go. The radius, distance and borderSize are the three variables.

2.Find the t with smoothstep function using those 3 variables from #1.

float t = smoothstep(radius + borderSize, radius - borderSize, distance); 

3.Mix the color before returning it.

Let's say that _BoundColor is the circle fill color and _BgColor is the background color.

If using GLSL using the mix function. If using Unity, use the lerp function. Both function are interchanging and the parameters are the-same.

col = lerp(_BoundColor, _BgColor, t);

The t is from #2. You can now return col in the fragment function.

---

These are the 3 steps put together:

if (dis > radius) {
    float t = smoothstep(radius + borderSize, radius - borderSize, distance);
    col = lerp(_BoundColor, _BgColor, t); 
}
else {
    float t = smoothstep(radius + borderSize, radius - borderSize, distance);
    col = lerp(_BoundColor, _BgColor, t);
}
return col;

---

OUTPUT WITHOUT ANTI-ALIASING:

OUTPUT WITH ANTI-ALIASING(4.5 Threshold):

---

Finally, the whole code(Tested on PC and Android but should work on iOS too)

Shader "Unlit/Circle Anti-Aliasing"
{
    Properties
    {
        _BoundColor("Bound Color", Color) = (0,0.5843137254901961,1,1)
        _BgColor("Background Color", Color) = (0.1176470588235294,0,0.5882352941176471,1)
        _circleSizePercent("Circle Size Percent", Range(0, 100)) = 50
        _border("Anti Alias Border Threshold", Range(0.00001, 5)) = 0.01
    }
        SubShader
    {
        Tags { "RenderType" = "Opaque" }
        LOD 100

        Pass
        {
            CGPROGRAM
            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag
            // make fog work
            #pragma multi_compile_fog

            #include "UnityCG.cginc"

            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };

            float _border;

            fixed4 _BoundColor;
            fixed4 _BgColor;
            float _circleSizePercent;

            struct v2f
            {
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };

            v2f vert(
                float4 vertex : POSITION, // vertex position input
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0, // texture coordinate input
                out float4 outpos : SV_POSITION // clip space position output
            )
            {
                v2f o;
                o.uv = uv;
                outpos = UnityObjectToClipPos(vertex);
                return o;
            }

            float2 antialias(float radius, float borderSize, float dist)
            {
                float t = smoothstep(radius + borderSize, radius - borderSize, dist);
                return t;
            }

            fixed4 frag(v2f i, UNITY_VPOS_TYPE screenPos : VPOS) : SV_Target
            {
                float4 col;
                float2 center = _ScreenParams.xy / 2;

                float maxradius = length(center);

                float radius = maxradius*(_circleSizePercent / 100);

                float dis = distance(screenPos.xy, center);

                if (dis > radius) {
                    float aliasVal = antialias(radius, _border, dis);
                    col = lerp(_BoundColor, _BgColor, aliasVal); //NOT needed but incluse just incase
                }
                else {
                    float aliasVal = antialias(radius, _border, dis);
                    col = lerp(_BoundColor, _BgColor, aliasVal);
                }
                return col;

            }
            ENDCG
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Try this:

Shader "Unlit/CircleSeletor"
{
    Properties
    {
        _BoundColor("Bound Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
        _BgColor("Background Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
        _MainTex("Albedo (RGB)", 2D) = "white" {}
        _BoundWidth("BoundWidth", float) = 10
        _ComponentWidth("ComponentWidth", float) = 100
    }

    SubShader
    {
        Pass
        {
            Blend SrcAlpha OneMinusSrcAlpha
            CGPROGRAM

            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag Lambert alpha
            // make fog work
            #pragma multi_compile_fog
            #include "UnityCG.cginc"

            sampler2D _MainTex;
            float _BoundWidth;
            fixed4 _BoundColor;
            fixed4 _BgColor;
            float _ComponentWidth;

            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
            };
            struct v2f
            {
                float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
                UNITY_FOG_COORDS(1)
                    float4 vertex : SV_POSITION;
            };

            float4 _MainTex_ST;
            v2f vert(appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.vertex = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);
                o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
                UNITY_TRANSFER_FOG(o,o.vertex);
                return o;
            }

            float antialias(float w, float d, float r) {
                return 1 - (d - r - w / 2) / (2 * w);
            }

            fixed4 frag(v2f i) : SV_Target
            {
                fixed4 c = tex2D(_MainTex,i.uv);
            float x = i.uv.x;
            float y = i.uv.y;
            float dis = sqrt(pow((0.5 - x), 2) + pow((0.5 - y), 2));
            if (dis > 0.5) {
                c.a = 0;
                discard;
            }
            else {
                float innerRadius = (_ComponentWidth * 0.5 - _BoundWidth) / _ComponentWidth;
                if (dis > innerRadius) {
                    c = _BoundColor;
                    //c.a = c.a*antialias(_BoundWidth, dis, innerRadius);
                }
                else {
                    c = _BgColor;
                }
            }
            return c;
            }

                ENDCG
        }
        GrabPass{
            "_MainTex2"
        }
        Pass
        {
                Blend One zero
            CGPROGRAM

            #pragma vertex vert
            #pragma fragment frag
            #include "UnityCG.cginc"

            struct appdata
            {
                float4 vertex : POSITION;
                fixed4 color : COLOR;
            };
            struct v2f 
            {
                float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
                fixed4 color : COLOR;
                float4 scrPos : TEXCOORD0;
            };

            float4 _MainTex_ST;
            v2f vert(appdata v)
            {
                v2f o;
                o.pos = mul(UNITY_MATRIX_MVP, v.vertex);    
                o.scrPos = ComputeScreenPos(o.pos);
                o.color = v.color;
                return o;
            }

            sampler2D _MainTex2;
            float4 _MainTex2_TexelSize;

            fixed4 frag(v2f i) : SV_Target
            {
                float2 uv = (i.scrPos.xy / i.scrPos.w);
                fixed4 c = tex2D(_MainTex2, uv );
                fixed4 up = tex2D(_MainTex2, uv + fixed2(0, _MainTex2_TexelSize.y));
                fixed4 down = tex2D(_MainTex2, uv - fixed2(0, _MainTex2_TexelSize.y));
                fixed4 left = tex2D(_MainTex2, uv - fixed2(_MainTex2_TexelSize.x, 0));
                fixed4 right = tex2D(_MainTex2, uv + fixed2(_MainTex2_TexelSize.x, 0));

                c.rgb = (c.rgb + up.rgb + down.rgb + left.rgb + right.rgb) / 5;
                c.a = (c.a + up.a + down.a + left.a + right.a) / 5;

                return c;
            }
                ENDCG

        }
    }
}

After first pass I GrabPass result and apply anti-alias in second pass by averaging border pixels.