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!

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Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
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Conventions used
Sections
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1
Chapter 1: Post Processing Stack
Chapter 1: Post Processing Stack
Technical requirements
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 the mood with color grading
Creating a horror game look with fog
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 2: Creating Your First Shader
Chapter 2: Creating Your First Shader
Technical requirements
Creating a basic Standard Shader
Adding properties to a shader
Using properties in a Surface Shader
3
Chapter 3: Working with Surface Shaders
Chapter 3: Working with Surface Shaders
Technical requirements
Implementing diffuse shading
Accessing and modifying packed arrays
Creating a shader with normal mapping
Creating a Holographic Shader
4
Chapter 4: Working with Texture Mapping
Chapter 4: Working with Texture Mapping
Technical requirements
Adding a texture to a shader
Scrolling textures by modifying UV values
Creating a transparent material
Packing and blending textures
Creating a circle around your terrain
5
Chapter 5: Understanding Lighting Models
Chapter 5: Understanding Lighting Models
Technical requirements
Creating a custom diffuse lighting model
Creating a toon shader
Creating a Phong Specular type
Creating a Blinn-Phong Specular type
Creating an Anisotropic Specular type
6
Chapter 6: Physically Based Rendering
Chapter 6: Physically Based Rendering
Technical requirements
Understanding the metallic setup
Adding transparency to PBR
Creating mirrors and reflective surfaces
Baking lights into your scene
7
Chapter 7: Vertex Functions
Chapter 7: Vertex Functions
Technical requirements
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
8
Chapter 8: Fragment Shaders and Grab Passes
Chapter 8: Fragment Shaders and Grab Passes
Technical requirements
Understanding Vertex and Fragment Shaders
Using grab passes to draw behind objects
Implementing a Glass Shader
Implementing a Water Shader for 2D games
9
Chapter 9: Mobile Shader Adjustment
Chapter 9: Mobile Shader Adjustment
Technical requirements
Techniques to make shaders more efficient
Profiling your shaders
Modifying our shaders for mobile
10
Chapter 10: Screen Effects with Unity Render Textures
Chapter 10: Screen Effects with Unity Render Textures
Technical requirements
Setting up a 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
11
Chapter 11: Gameplay and Screen Effects
Chapter 11: Gameplay and Screen Effects
Technical requirements
Creating an old movie screen effect
Creating a night-vision screen effect
12
Chapter 12: Advanced Shading Techniques
Chapter 12: Advanced Shading Techniques
Technical requirements
Using Unity's built-in CgInclude files
Making your shader work in a modular way with CgInclude
Implementing a Fur Shader
Implementing Heatmaps with arrays
13
Chapter 13: Shader Graph – 2D
Chapter 13: Shader Graph – 2D
Technical requirement
Creating a URP-based Shader Graph project
Implementing a simple Shader Graph
Exposing properties to the Inspector via Shader Graph
Creating a Sprite Outline Shader
14
Chapter 14: Shader Graph – 3D
Chapter 14: Shader Graph – 3D
Technical requirements
Implementing a glowing highlight system
Portal Shaders in Unity
Creating custom Shader Graph functions
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Preface

Unity 2021 Shaders and Effects Cookbook is your guide to becoming familiar with the creation of shaders and post-processing effects in Unity 2021. You will start your journey at the beginning, exploring the Post Processing Stack to see some of the possible ways you can use shaders to affect what you see without having to write scripts at all. Afterward, we will learn how to create shaders from scratch, starting by creating the most basic shaders and learning how the shader code is structured. This foundational knowledge will arm you with the means to progress further through each chapter, learning advanced techniques such as volumetric explosions and fur shading. We also explore the newly added Shader Graph editor to see how you can create shaders through a drag-and-drop interface as well! This edition of the book is written specifically for Unity 2021 and will help you to master physically based rendering and global illumination to get as close to photorealism as possible.

By the end of each chapter, you will have gained new skills that will increase the quality of your shaders and even make your shader writing process more efficient. These chapters have been tailored so that you can jump into each section and learn a specific skill, going from beginner to expert. For those who are new to shader writing in Unity, you can progress through each chapter, one at a time, to build on your knowledge. Either way, you will learn the techniques that make modern games look the way they do.

Once you have completed this book, you will have a set of shaders that you can use in your Unity 3D games as well as an understanding of how to add to them, accomplish new effects, and address performance needs. So, let's get started!

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