Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

By : Brais Brenlla Ramos, John P. Doran
Book Image

Unreal Engine 4 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

By: Brais Brenlla Ramos, John P. Doran

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine 4 is a powerful game engine, one which has seen a recent boost in widespread adoption thanks to its ease of use and the powerful rendering pipeline that it packs. Seeing as how it's relatively easy to create stunning presentations and visuals, Unreal has quickly become a strong contender in industries where this kind of software had been previously denied entry. With that in mind, this book aims to help you get the most out of Unreal Engine 4 - from creating awe-inspiring graphics to delivering optimized experiences to your users. This is possible thanks to a mixture of hands-on experience with real materials and the theory behind them. You will immediately know how to create that material that you want to display, and you'll also end up with the knowledge that will let you know how to control it. All of this will be done without losing sight of two key components of any real-time application - optimization, and efficiency. The materials that you create will be light and efficient, and they will vary depending on your target platform. You'll know which techniques can be used in any kind of device and which ones should be kept to high-end machines, giving you the confidence to tackle any material-related task that you can imagine. Hop onboard and discover how!
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Introduction


Try to think for a moment about any game or app you've played in the past – that could be your favorite childhood video game or a recent one that you can't stop thinking about. I'm sure that the first thing you'll remember will be tied to a specific experience you had while playing the game, something that impressed you at the time. It could be the way the world was crafted within the game, or a specific sequence of events that happened in it. In any case, we can probably agree that apps and games aren't just made out of static components, such as models and materials, but the interactions and the magic that happens when everything works together.

In this recipe, we'll take a look at some of those elements within the realm of materials that add interactivity and functionality to our real-time experiences. As we said before, shaders have the ability to be interactive as well, and thanks to that and the logic that we write, we can create powerful assets that make our levels that...