Contents
Most of the tutorials below are for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), but content may still work in the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) too. It may need adjusting in some places due to HDRP using Camera-Relative rendering which makes World space relative to the camera position. Also note that the View Direction node is normalised in HDRP but not in URP.
Sections :
Looking for a place to start? Check out my Intro to Shaders and Intro to Shader Graph posts!
Resources :
If you have any comments, questions or suggestions you can drop me a tweet or join my discord. If you found this site useful, please share a link with others!
Tutorial Breakdowns
(Tutorials breaking down how to create specific shader effects)
Holofoil Card Shader Breakdown
A shader that replicates the Holographic Foil effects on Trading Cards. Also explains the stencil shader effect on the card window.
Soft Foliage Shader Breakdown
Soft shaded foliage shader that uses alpha clipping with foliage texture and a small amount of vertex displacement to simulate wind. Applied to a mesh consisting of intersecting quads generated from a particle system
Crystal Shader Breakdown
An unlit/glowing crystal shader with a colour gradient based on object space Y position, and refraction via Scene Color node
Fire Shader Breakdown
A shader which distorts the UVs with noise for sampling a fire texture or shape generated using ellipse nodes
Sprite Glow/Outline Shader Breakdown
A shader which uses a signed distance field stored in the sprite texture's alpha channel to create an outline/glow (and inner-glow) effect, with control over the colour and thickness
Sprite Stencil Overlay Breakdown
An example of using the RenderObjects feature on the Forward Renderer to produce an overlay effect for sprites (not compatible with the 2D renderer)
Dissolve Shader Breakdown
A shader which uses noise and step functions to discard pixels to create a dissolving effect. Also provides examples for dissolving based on height / Y and using view space position as UVs to avoid seams
Toon Glass Shader Breakdown
A shader which produces solid diagonal lines across a quad's surface that moves with the camera position to simulate toon-like glass reflections
Fog Plane Shader Breakdown
Two examples of vertical fog effects produced using the depth texture (scene depth)
Cloud Shader Breakdown
A shader applied to a flat subdivided plane where vertices are offset vertically based on layered noise, moving at different rates, to create a cloud effect. Also uses scene depth to produce a softer transition with intersecting game objects
Forcefield Shader Breakdown
A forcefield shader using fresnel effect for glowing edges, scene depth for object intersections and scene colour to produce ripples/distortion
Forcefield Shader Breakdown (Simple)
A simple version of a forcefield shader, using fresnel effect for glowing edges and scene depth for intersections with objects in the scene
Jellyfish Shader Breakdown
A shader that displaces vertices based on sine waves in order to animate a Jellyfish mesh
Water Shader Breakdown
A water shader that uses the scene color to produce distortion/refractions and reconstructs a position from the scene depth to project caustics on underwater objects
Whirlpool Shader Breakdown
A shader that uses polar coordinates to offset vertices as well as sample a seamless noise texture to create a swirling effect
Hologram Shader Breakdown
A hologram shader based on sine/fraction nodes to produce repeating horizontal lines and fresnel effect, with optional distortion and glitching effects
Portal Shader Breakdown
A portal/wormhole shader on manipulating polar coordinates to create a spiralling effect
Liquid Shader Breakdown
A shader that discards pixels above a certain Y position and renders back faces to fake the top surface of the liquid
I’m still working on copying some content from my old Wordpress blog. Sorry! For now you can find the following breakdowns there :
Tutorial Posts
(Posts explaining general shader-related topics or shader graph nodes.)
Writing Shader Code in Universal RP (v2)
Explains how shader code (ShaderLab & HLSL) is written to support the Universal RP
Intro to Shader Graph
A detailed introduction on how to use Unity Shader Graph (including v10+ changes). Graph setup, Data types, Understanding Previews, Properties, Keywords, Sub Graphs and more!
Intro to Shaders
An introduction to what a Mesh, Shader and Material is in Unity, how to set Shader Properties from C#, a brief look at Forward vs Deferred rendering and some information about Material instances and Batching
Depth
A big post explaining everything about Depth : Depth Buffer, Depth Texture / Scene Depth node, SV_Depth, Reconstructing World Position from Depth, etc.
Vertex Displacement
A post explaining how to move vertices in Shader Graph, providing examples such as swaying grass and animated fish and butterflies
Also still working on copying / rewriting content from my old Wordpress blog, Sorry! You might be able to find some more stuff there, mainly :
- Orthographic Depth (mentioned in the Depth post above too)
- Passing Particle System Data into Shader Graph
- Post Processing in URP
- Scene Color & Scene Depth Nodes (Scene Depth is in Depth post above. Plan on making a separate Scene Color post, for now see the old one)
- UV-Based Nodes
- Voronoi
- Worldspace UVs & Triplanar Mapping
- Writing Shader Code for URP
Twitter Threads
(Links to shader-related twitter threads that I’ve made. I haven’t turned any of these into proper posts/breakdowns but they might still be useful!)
- Grass Geometry Shader & Github
- Soft Foliage Shader (See breakdown above)
- Waterfall Shader (With sphere interaction)
- Impossible Cube (Stencil shader effects)
- Fireball sphere (Particle System, Dissolve based on noise & Fresnel effect)
- Animal Crossing Shoreline Shader Mini Breakdown
- Animal Crossing Style World Bending
- Post Processing based Water
- Interior Mapping
- Alien Rune Cube
- Hourglass (Taking the Liquid Shader further)
- Colour Picker
- Depth Mask Boat (& Render Texture Foam Trails)
- Render Texture Puddles
- SDF Pumpkin
- Melting Candles
- Ice Shader
- Lava Bubbles (Particle System with bubble mesh, Dissolve based on lifetime)
- Resizable Dashed Arrow
- Replicating Quantum Conundrum’s Dimension-Switching effect
- Mario Sunshine Goop (2D/Planar)
- Mario Sunshine Goop (3D), Based on this video.
- Procedural Skybox Clouds
- Procedural Skybox Moon Phases
- Terrain Splatmap in Shader Graph
- Terrain Blending
- GPU Instancing in Shader Graph
- Water Reflections
- Rainy Window Shader
- Sun/Stars (space/celestial theme)
- Trading Card Holographic Foil (also see breakdown above)
- Anisotropic Hair Shader
- Potion Shader
- Paper Lanterns
Other
- To Do (A simple in-editor to-do list for Unity, attached to a GameObject as a component)
- Card experiments (& github)
- Ludum Dare 48 (Deeper and deeper) jam game & twitter thread
- Recursion (A first person puzzle game I’ve been working on every now and then)