This is the first part of the online series inspired by the sand rendering of Journey. Join me in this journey into the secrets that made Journey’s sand shader so iconic.
A Journey Into Journey’s Sand Shader
Tutorial
There are 129 posts filed in Tutorial (this is page 2 of 13).
Believable Caustics Reflections
Creating believable caustics reflections is something that most technical artists have attempted achieving at some point in their career. If you are a game developer, one of the main reasons to use Twitter is the endless stream of inspiration it can provide. A few days ago Florian Gelzenleuchter (kolyaTQ on twitter) posted a GIF of a caustics effect created in Unity using shaders. The post (below) quickly reached 1.5K likes, showing a genuine interest for this type of content.
Want to have sweet caustics? Here you go:
-> Get a caustics texture (bw)
-> unpack in shader twice and pan at different speed/size
-> blend with min(tex2, tex1)
-> Enjoy!(If you're extra fancy, add some rgb split to the tex!)#screenshotsaturday #unity3d #gamedev #indiedev pic.twitter.com/U9yFAE3eKs
— FLOGELZ (@flogelz) August 24, 2019
While I usually focus on longer, more technical series (such as Volumetric Atmospheric Scattering and Inverse Kinematics), I could not resist the temptation of writing a short and sweet tutorial about Florian‘s effects.
At the end of this article, you will also find a link to download the Unity package with all the assets necessary. Continue reading
Interactive Map Shader: Terrain Shading
This is the third part of the online course dedicated to interactive maps.
This is a tutorial in three parts:
- Part 1: Interactive Map Shader: Vertex Displacement
- Part 2: Interactive Map Shader: Scrolling Effect
- Part 3: Interactive Map Shader: Terain Shading
A link to download the Unity package for this tutorial can be found at the end of this article.
Interactive Map Shader: Scrolling Effect
This is the second part of the online course dedicated to interactive maps.
This is a tutorial in three parts:
- Part 1: Interactive Map Shader: Vertex Displacement
- Part 2: Interactive Map Shader: Scrolling Effect
- Part 3: Interactive Map Shader: Terrain Shading
A link to download the Unity package for this tutorial can be found at the end of this article.
Interactive Map Shader: Vertex Displacement
This online course is dedicated to interactive maps, and how to create them using Shaders in Unity.
This is a tutorial in three parts:
- Part 1: Interactive Map Shader: Vertex Displacement
- Part 2: Interactive Map Shader: Scrolling Effect
- Part 3: Interactive Map Shader: Terrain Shading
This effect will serve as the base for more advanced techniques, such as holographic projections and even Black Panther’s sand table.
A link to download the Unity package for this tutorial can be found at the end of this article.
Sprite Doodle Shader Effect
This online course will teach you how to recreate a popular sprite doodle effect using Shaders in Unity. If this is an aesthetic that you want in your game, this tutorial will show you how to achieve it without the need to draw dozens of different images.
Such a style has become increasingly popular over the past few years, with many games such as GoNNER and Baba is You heavily relying on it.
This tutorial covers everything you need to know, from teaching the basics of shader coding to the maths used. At the end, you will also find a link to download the complete Unity package.
This series is also strongly inspired by the success of Doodle Studio 95!.
Parallax Shaders & Depth Maps
In the previous part of this series, Inside Facebook 3D Photos, we have explained how modern mobile phones are able to infer depth from pictures. Such a piece of information is stored in a depth map, which is used for a variety of effects. From blurring the background to three-dimensional reconstruction, this type of technology will become more and more present in our daily lives.
This is a two-part series. You can read all the posts here:
- Part 1. Inside Facebook 3D Photos
- Part 2. Parallax Shaders & Depth Maps
A link to the complete Unity package is available at the end of the tutorial.
Inside Facebook 3D Photos: Parallax Shaders
In the past few months, Facebook has been plagued filled with 3D photos. If you have not had the chance to see one, 3D photos are images inside a post which gently change perspective as you scroll the page, or as you move your mouse over them.
A few months prior to their introduction, Facebook had been testing a similar feature with 3D models. While it is easy to understand how Facebook can render 3D models and rotates them according to the mouse position, the same might not be as intuitive for 3D photos.
The techniques that Facebook is using to create the illusion of three-dimensionality on two-dimensional pictures is sometimes known as height map displacement, and it relies on an optical phenomenon called parallax.
This is a two-part series. You can read all the posts here:
- Part 1. Inside Facebook 3D Photos
- Part 2. Parallax Shaders & Depth Maps
A link to the complete Unity package is available at the end of the tutorial.
Shader Showcase Saturday #11: Return of the Obra Dinn
Most indie developers might know Lucas Pope as the developers of the critically acclaimed Papers, Please. Thanks to its simple, yet thoughtful mechanics, Papers, Please helped to shape an entirely new genre of video games. And it even inspired a short film with the same name.
Despite its success, one of the most recurring criticisms the game has faced is related to the apparent simplicity of its execution. With Return of the Obra Dinn, Lucas Pope clears any doubt with a game that, by itself, is nothing less than an achievement in technical excellence.
Shader Showcase Saturday #10: Fortnite Procedural Animations
It is no mystery that Fortnite has now become one of the most successful computer games of all time. While many see it as a case study for excellence in marketing and game design, the game itself features some very interesting shader effects.
From a Technical Artist perspective, the most striking effect featured in Fortnite is the self-building effect. When an object is being constructed, its individual pieces appear one by one out of thin air, and fly into position. The same effect is somehow played, in reverse, when an object is damaged, by showing those very pieces flying away and disappearing (above).