Book Image

Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook

By : Alan Zucconi
Book Image

Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook

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.

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Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook
Alan Zucconi
Feb, 2016 | 240 pages
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Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook
Unity 5.x Shaders and Effects Cookbook
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Creating Your First Shader
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
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
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
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
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
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
Mobile Shader Adjustment
Introduction
What is a cheap shader?
Profiling your shaders
Modifying our shaders for mobile
8
Screen Effects with Unity Render Textures
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
Gameplay and Screen Effects
Introduction
Creating an old movie screen effect
Creating a night vision screen effect
10
Advanced Shading Techniques
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

Creating a Toon Shader

One of the most used effects in games is the toon shading, which is also known as cel shading (short for celluloid). It is a non-photorealistic rendering technique that makes 3D models appear flat. Many games use it to give the illusion that the graphics are being hand-drawn rather than being 3D-modeled. You can see, in the following picture, a sphere rendered with a Standard Shader (right) and Toon Shader (left):

Achieving this effect using just surface functions is not impossible, but it would be extremely expensive and time-consuming. The surface function, in fact, only works on the properties of the material, not its actual lighting condition. As toon shading requires to change the way light reflects, we need to create our custom lighting model instead.

Getting ready

Let's start this recipe by creating a shader and its material and importing a special texture, as follows:

  1. Start by creating a new shader; in this example, we will extend the one made in the previous...

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