Resources
The list below links resources mostly related to Shaders and Unity (various pipelines), including both external & most of my tutorials (the ones with images). Some entries may be for other engines or graph editors but the general idea/method could still be useful, especially if graph/node-based as those tend to have the same nodes just named differently.
- The list is loaded from a Github gist (so I don’t have to update the entire site to add entries). If it fails to load for some reason can optionally view that instead.
- Entries are grouped under various headings. You can also use the filter below to locate things easier.
Filter Usage
- The filter below searches for the exact string/keyword (not case sensitive) anywhere in text (including tags at side), so I’d recommend sticking to a single short keyword, like “water”
- If you want to use multiple keywords, separate each with
","or"&"(for AND),"|"(for OR), and use"("and")"for grouping.- Example :
"(BiRP | URP) & HLSL". - AND takes precedence, so
"a | b & c | d"is the same as"a | (b & c) | d"
- Example :
If you have suggestions of links to add, please put them in the #resources section of my discord!~
GPU Instanced Grass Breakdown
A post showing how Shader Graph can be used with DrawMeshInstancedProcedural / RenderMeshPrimitives and DrawMeshInstancedIndirect / RenderMeshIndirect to draw grass using GPU Instancing.
(Cyanilux)
Shoreline Shader Breakdown
A few shader techniques I've used in the past for mapping waves crashing into the shore/beach & leaving behind wet sand
(Cyanilux)
Sun Beams / God Rays Shader Breakdown
Using billboarded quads (or particles) to produce a god rays effect
(Cyanilux)
2D Water Shader Breakdown
A water shader intended for 2D, with pixelated highlights, distortion, reflections and simplified shoreline waves/ripples
(Cyanilux)
Ultraviolet Lights & Invisible Ink
Examples for revealing invisible objects (especially decals, such as fingerprints or hidden messages) based on lights, stencils and other masking methods
(Cyanilux)
Book (w/ Turnable Pages) Breakdown
A book with pages that flip/turn via vertex displacement, and selects a portion of a texture containing all pages.
(Cyanilux)
Rain Effects Breakdown
A few rain effects, including particles setup, and shaders for ripples in water/puddles and rain interacting with surfaces
(Cyanilux)
Waterfall Shader Breakdown
A waterfall shader that interacts with a sphere to part the flowing water. Uses a signed distance field and alpha clipping.
(Cyanilux)
Fractured Cube Breakdown
Uses a shader which displaces (scales/rotates) vertices of a prefractured mesh with pivots baked into UV maps
(Cyanilux)
Snowglobe Breakdown
Glass globe shader with background refraction & reflection. Particles are contained inside which inherit Rigidbody movements.
(Cyanilux)
Tentacle Shader Breakdown
A shader that uses vertex displacement to simulate a tentacle grabbing / wrapping around an object
(Cyanilux)
Tornado Shader Breakdown
A shader applied to a few layers of alpha-clipped scrolling noise, with vertex displacement to make it wobble
(Cyanilux)
Sword Slash Shader Breakdown
A shader applied to a ring mesh that pans a texture along it to create a swipe/slash effect
(Cyanilux)
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.
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
Crystal Shader Breakdown
An unlit/glowing crystal shader with a colour gradient based on object space Y position, and refraction via Scene Color node
(Cyanilux)
Fire/Flame Shader Breakdown
A shader which distorts the UVs with noise for sampling a fire texture or shape generated using ellipse nodes
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
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)
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
Fog Plane Shader Breakdown
Two examples of vertical fog effects produced using the depth texture (scene depth)
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
Forcefield Shader Breakdown
A forcefield shader using fresnel effect for glowing edges, scene depth for object intersections and scene colour to produce ripples/distortion
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
Jellyfish Shader Breakdown
A shader that displaces vertices based on sine waves in order to animate a Jellyfish mesh
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
Portal Shader Breakdown
A portal/wormhole shader on manipulating polar coordinates to create a spiralling effect
(Cyanilux)
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
(Cyanilux)
Local UVs for Sprites in Sprite Sheet/Atlas
A small post explaining how to convert the UVs of a sprite sheet (or sprites packed in an atlas) into local 0-1 coordinates across each sprite in the shader
(Cyanilux)
Custom Renderer Features
Goes through examples of Renderer Features and explains how to write Custom Renderer Features and Scriptable Render Passes for Universal RP. Mostly focuses on Unity 2022, but now also provides some snippets for newer versions!
(Cyanilux)
Swapping Colours
Examples of how to adjust/swap colours or colour palettes for a given texture/procedural input.
(Cyanilux)
Writing Shader Code in Universal RP (v2)
Explains how shader code (ShaderLab & HLSL) is written to support the Universal RP
(Cyanilux)
Intro to Shader Graph
A detailed introduction on how to use Unity Shader Graph! Graph setup, Data types, Understanding Previews, Properties, Keywords, Sub Graphs and more!
(Cyanilux)
Intro to the Shader Pipeline
An introduction to what a Mesh, Shader and Material is in Unity, how to set Shader Properties from C#, various types of Batching, and a brief look at Forward, Forward+ and Deferred rendering paths
(Cyanilux)
Depth
A big post explaining everything about Depth : Depth Buffer, Depth Texture / Scene Depth node, SV_Depth, Reconstructing World Position from Depth, etc.
(Cyanilux)
Vertex Displacement
A post explaining how to move vertices in Shader Graph, providing examples such as swaying grass and animated fish and butterflies. Also includes info about recalculating normal vectors.
(Cyanilux)
( No results sorry, Try a different filter!~ )