Book Image

Unity 2021 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Fourth Edition

By : John P. Doran
Book Image

Unity 2021 Shaders and Effects Cookbook - Fourth Edition

By: John P. Doran

Overview of this book

Shaders enable you to create powerful visuals for your game projects. However, creating shaders for your games can be notoriously challenging with various factors such as complex mathematics standing in the way of attaining the level of realism you crave for your shaders. The Unity 2021 Shaders and Effects Cookbook helps you overcome that with a recipe-based approach to creating shaders using Unity. This fourth edition is updated and enhanced using Unity 2021 features and tools covering Unity's new way of creating particle effects with the VFX Graph. You'll learn how to use VFX Graph for advanced shader development. The book also features updated recipes for using Shader Graph to create 2D and 3D elements. You'll cover everything you need to know about vectors, how they can be used to construct lighting, and how to use textures to create complex effects without the heavy math. You'll also understand how to use the visual-based Shader Graph for creating shaders without any code. By the end of this Unity book, you'll have developed a set of shaders that you can use in your Unity 3D games and be able to accomplish new effects and address the performance needs of your Unity game development projects. So, let's get started!
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Chapter 10: Screen Effects with Unity Render Textures

One of the most impressive aspects of learning to write shaders is the process of creating your own screen effects, also known as post effects. With these screen effects, we can create stunning real-time images with Bloom, Motion Blur, high-dynamic-range (HDR) effects, and so on. Most modern games on the market today make heavy use of these screen effects for their depth-of-field effects, Bloom effects, and even color-correction effects.

In Chapter 1, Post Processing Stack, we discussed how to use this with Unity's built-in Post Processing Stack, but in this chapter, you will learn how to build up the script system yourself. This system will give you the control to create many kinds of screen effects. We will cover RenderTexture, what the depth buffer is, and how to create effects that give you Photoshop-like control over the final rendered image of your game. By utilizing screen effects for your games, you not only round...