Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Third Edition

By : John P. Doran, Alan Zucconi

Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Third Edition

By: John P. Doran, Alan Zucconi

Overview of this book

Since their introduction to Unity, shaders have been seen as notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games. Complex mathematics has always stood in the way of creating your own shaders and attaining the level of realism you crave. Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook changes that by giving you a recipe-based guide to creating shaders using Unity. It will show you everything you need to know about vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math. This book starts by teaching you how to use shaders without writing code with the post-processing stack. Then, you’ll learn how to write shaders from scratch, build up essential lighting, and finish by creating stunning screen effects just like those in high-quality 3D and mobile games. You'll discover techniques, such as normal mapping, image-based lighting, and animating your models inside a shader. We'll explore how to use physically based rendering to treat light the way it behaves in the real world. At the end, we’ll even look at Unity 2018’s new Shader Graph system. With this book, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Sections

Get in touch

Free Chapter

Post Processing Stack

Introduction

Installing the Post Processing Stack

Getting a filmic look using grain, vignetting, and depth of field

Mimicking real life with bloom and anti-aliasing

Setting mood with color grading

Creating a horror game look with fog

Creating Your First Shader

Introduction

Creating a basic Standard Shader

Adding properties to a shader

Using properties in a Surface Shader

Surface Shaders and Texture Mapping

Introduction

Diffuse shading

Accessing and modifying packed arrays

Adding a texture to a shader

Scrolling textures by modifying UV values

Creating a shader with normal mapping

Creating a transparent material

Creating a Holographic Shader

Packing and blending textures

Creating a circle around your terrain

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

Physically-Based Rendering

Introduction

Understanding the metallic setup

Adding transparency to PBR

Creating mirrors and reflective surfaces

Baking lights in your scene

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

Fragment Shaders and Grab Passes

Introduction

Understanding Vertex and Fragment Shaders

Using the grab pass to draw behind objects

Implementing a Glass Shader

Implementing a Water Shader for 2D games

Mobile Shader Adjustment

Introduction

Techniques to make shaders more efficient

Profiling your shaders

Modifying our shaders for mobile

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

Gameplay and Screen Effects

Introduction

Creating an old movie screen effect

Creating a night vision screen effect

Advanced Shading Techniques

Introduction

Using Unity's built-in CgInclude files

Making your shader world in a modular way with CgInclude

Implementing a Fur Shader

Implementing Heatmaps with arrays

Shader Graph

Introduction

Creating a Shader Graph project

Implementing a simple a Shader Graph

Exposing properties to the Inspector via Shader Graph

Implementing a glowing highlight system

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To get the most out of this book

Readers are expected to have experience of working with Unity and some scripting experience (C# or JavaScript is fine). The book is written with Unity 2018.1.0f2, but should work with future versions of the engine with some minor tweaks.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

Log in or register at www.packtpub.com.
Select the SUPPORT tab.
Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Unity-2018-Shaders-and-Effects-Cookbook-Third-Edition. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Unity2018ShadersandEffectsCookbookThirdEdition_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "A Unity package is a single file that contains various Assets that can be used in Unity in a similar manner to a .zip file."

A block of code is set as follows:

Properties 
{
  _MainTex("Texture", 2D) = "white" 
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutputStandard o) {
  // Use the tint provided as the base color for the material
  o.Albedo = _MainTint;

  // Get the normal data out of the normal map texture 
  // using the UnpackNormal function 
  float3 normalMap = UnpackNormal(tex2D(_NormalTex, 
    IN.uv_NormalTex)); 
 
  normalMap.x *= _NormalMapIntensity; 
  normalMap.y *= _NormalMapIntensity; 

  // Apply the new normal to the lighting model 
  o.Normal = normalize(normalMap.rgb); 
}

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "To finally bake the lights, open the Lighting window by going to Window | Lighting | Settings. Once there, select the Global Maps tab."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Third Edition

By : John P. Doran, Alan Zucconi

Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Third Edition

By: John P. Doran, Alan Zucconi

Overview of this book

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