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Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Alan Zucconi

4.1 (9)

Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook

4.1 (9)

By: Alan Zucconi

Overview of this book

Since their introduction to Unity, Shaders have been notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games: complex mathematics have always stood in the way of creating your own Shaders and attaining that level of realism you crave. With Shaders, you can transform your game into a highly polished, refined product with Unity’s post-processing effects. Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook is the first of its kind to bring you the secrets of creating Shaders for Unity3D—guiding you through the process of understanding vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and also how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math. We’ll start with essential lighting and finishing up by creating stunning screen Effects just like those in high quality 3D and mobile games. You’ll discover techniques including normal mapping, image-based lighting, and how to animate your models inside a Shader. We’ll explore the secrets behind some of the most powerful techniques, such as physically based rendering! With Unity Shaders and Effects Cookbook, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Creating Your First Shader

1. Creating Your First Shader

Introduction

Creating a basic Standard Shader

Migrating Legacy Shaders from Unity 4 to Unity 5

Adding properties to a shader

Using properties in a Surface Shader

2. Surface Shaders and Texture Mapping

2. Surface Shaders and Texture Mapping

Introduction

Diffuse shading

Using packed arrays

Adding a texture to a shader

Scrolling textures by modifying UV values

Normal mapping

Creating a transparent material

Creating a Holographic Shader

Packing and blending textures

Creating a circle around your terrain

3. Understanding Lighting Models

3. Understanding Lighting Models

Introduction

Creating a custom diffuse lighting model

Creating a Toon Shader

Creating a Phong Specular type

Creating a BlinnPhong Specular type

Creating an Anisotropic Specular type

4. Physically Based Rendering in Unity 5

4. Physically Based Rendering in Unity 5

Introduction

Understanding the metallic setup

Adding transparency to PBR

Creating mirrors and reflective surfaces

Baking lights in your scene

5. Vertex Functions

5. Vertex Functions

Introduction

Accessing a vertex color in a Surface Shader

Animating vertices in a Surface Shader

Extruding your models

Implementing a snow shader

Implementing a volumetric explosion

6. Fragment Shaders and Grab Passes

6. Fragment Shaders and Grab Passes

Introduction

Understanding Vertex and Fragment Shaders

Using grab pass

Implementing a Glass Shader

Implementing a Water Shader for 2D games

7. Mobile Shader Adjustment

7. Mobile Shader Adjustment

Introduction

What is a cheap shader?

Profiling your shaders

Modifying our shaders for mobile

8. Screen Effects with Unity Render Textures

8. Screen Effects with Unity Render Textures

Introduction

Setting up the screen effects script system

Using brightness, saturation, and contrast with screen effects

Using basic Photoshop-like Blend modes with screen effects

Using the Overlay Blend mode with screen effects

9. Gameplay and Screen Effects

9. Gameplay and Screen Effects

Introduction

Creating an old movie screen effect

Creating a night vision screen effect

10. Advanced Shading Techniques

10. Advanced Shading Techniques

Introduction

Using CgInclude files that are built into Unity

Making your shader world modular with CgInclude

Implementing a Fur Shader

Implementing heatmaps with arrays

Index

Index

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Using packed arrays

Loosely speaking, the code inside a shader has to be executed for at least every pixel in your screen. This is the reason why GPUs are highly optimized for parallel computing. This philosophy is also evident in the standard type of variables and operators available in Cg. Understanding them is essential not just to use shaders correctly, but also to write highly optimized ones.

How to do it...

There are two types of variables in Cg: single values and packed arrays. The latter can be identified because their type ends with a number such as float3 or int4. As their names suggest, these types of variables are similar to structs, which means that they each contain several single values. Cg calls them packed arrays, though they are not exactly arrays in the traditional sense.

The elements of a packed array can be accessed as a normal struct. They are typically called x, y, z, and w. However, Cg also provides you with another alias for them, that is, r, g, b, and a. Despite...

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