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)

Creating a Phong Specular type

The specularity of an object's surface simply describes how shiny it is. In the shader world, these types of effects are often referred to as view-dependent effects. This is because, in order to achieve a realistic Specular effect in your shaders, you need to include the direction of the camera or the user who is facing the object's surface. The most basic and performance-friendly Specular type is the Phong Specular effect. It is the calculation of the light direction reflecting off the surface compared to the user's view direction. It is a common Specular model used in many applications, from games to movies. While it is not the most realistic in terms of accurately modeling the reflected Specular, it gives a great approximation of what is expected of the shininess that performs well in most situations. Additionally, if your object is further away from the camera and there is no need for a perfectly accurate Specular, this is a great way...