Heatwave Shader

Deserts and canyons are hot. Heat produces heatwaves. And so does shader forge!

A breakdown of the shader. It takes two normal maps, blends them together, then takes the red and green channels (as this is what refraction needs) and fades the edges using a mask. On top of this, it also scrolls the UV's much like a water shader to mimic the movement. On top of the already on topped of, is there is two values you can change on the material to control the opacity of each normal map and the overall outcome.

 

It might be hard to see, but its there. It's clearer in motion obviously!

Before I forget, another feature of the heatwave shader is that it fades out the closer you get to it. You can tweak the max distance on the material.

I simply put the material on planes and made them HUGE then placed them around the scene.

The big blue wireframes are where the heatwaves are placed. I ended up having to write a script to turn them on when you play, because having them on in the scene view got really annoying because they are big planes, Unity would think you are clicking on them to select them all the time!!!!