UV Animation

UV Animation modulates the texture lookup coordinates per frame to animate surfaces without touching geometry. Genesis ships six modes — scroll, wave, distortion, pixelate, stutter, and hand-drawn jitter — covering everything from flowing water to 12 FPS stop-motion looks.

Video

A flat water plane with scrolling foam (Scroll mode) and a heat-haze panel distorting the background (Distortion mode) playing side by side, the geometry staying perfectly still.

features/uv-animation/uv-anim-overview.mp4

Surface motion with no geometry change — scrolling foam and heat-haze distortion.

When to use it

Conveyor belts and treadmills — scroll mode.
Water surfaces — wave plus distortion.
Retro and pixel art — pixelate mode.
Stop-motion and hand-drawn anime — stutter plus jitter.

Difference from Vertex Animation

Vertex Animation moves the mesh. UV Animation moves the texture. Use vertex for shape changes and UV for surface motion. They stack — a wavy water plane (vertex wave) with scrolling foam (UV scroll) is a classic combination.

Modes

Scroll — constant (u, v) += (_ScrollX, _ScrollY) * _Time. The simplest mode.
Wave — a sinusoidal warp: uv += sin(uv.yx * density + time * speed) * amplitude.
Distortion — samples a normal-style map and uses its XY as an additional UV offset, for heat-haze looks.
Pixelate — snaps UVs to a configurable grid for retro-pixel rendering.
Stutter — quantizes time to a frame rate (for example 12 FPS) so all UV animation steps in discrete frames.
Hand-drawn — sub-pixel UV jitter that changes every N frames, giving the impression of redrawn frames.

Animated GIF

A row of identical textured quads each looping a different UV animation mode — Scroll, Wave, Distortion, Pixelate, Stutter, Hand-drawn — so the motion of each is distinguishable, with mode names labelled.

features/uv-animation/uv-anim-modes.gif

The six UV animation modes looping on identical quads.

Properties

Inspector label	Shader property	Type	Default	Description
Mode	_UVAnimMode	Enum	Off	Off, Scroll, Wave, Distortion, Pixelate, Stutter, or HandDrawn.
Scroll Speed	_UVScrollSpeed	Vector4	(0.1, 0, 0, 0)	Scroll velocity; xy = U, V.
Wave Amplitude	_UVWaveAmplitude	Float (0–1)	0.02	Wave displacement strength.
Wave Frequency	_UVWaveFrequency	Float (0–32)	8.0	Wave density.
Distortion Map	_UVDistortionMap	Texture2D	None	RG channels used as a UV offset.
Distortion Strength	_UVDistortionStrength	Float (0–1)	0.03	Multiplier on the distortion offset.
Pixel Grid	_UVPixelGrid	Float (4–512)	64	Pixelate cells per UV unit.
Stutter FPS	_UVStutterFPS	Int (1–30)	12	Step rate for Stutter mode.
Jitter Amount	_UVJitterAmount	Float (0–2)	0.5	Hand-drawn jitter radius in pixels.

Usage

Pick the Mode that matches your effect.
For Scroll, set the velocity in Scroll Speed (0.1 is a slow drift, 1.0 a fast conveyor).
For Stutter or Hand-drawn, set the frame rate; 8–15 FPS reads as 2D animation.
Stack with Posterize and Cel Shading for the canonical anime aesthetic.


material.SetFloat("_UVAnimMode", 5); // Stutter
material.SetInt("_UVStutterFPS", 12);
material.SetVector("_UVScrollSpeed", new Vector4(0.05f, 0, 0, 0));

Tips & gotchas

Wrap mode matters: scroll modes need Repeat wrapping, since clamped textures leak edge color.
Stutter affects everything inside the shader, including dissolve and emission pulses, so pair them deliberately.
Scroll is free; distortion adds one texture sample, and stutter is a quantize, also free.
UV animation is fragment-side and per-eye consistent in VR.

Vertex Animation — the geometry-side cousin.
Cel Shading — stutter plus cel gives the 2D anime look.
Hologram — scan lines are a built-in UV scroll.
Dissolve — combine with UV scroll for moving dissolve patterns.