Journey Sand Shader: Ripples

This is the sixth part of the online series dedicated to Journey Sand Shader.

In this final post, we will recreate the typical sand ripples that appear due to the dune-wind interaction.

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Journey Sand Shader: Glitter Reflection

This is the fifth part of the online series dedicated to Journey Sand Shader.

In this fifth post, we will recreate the shimmering reflections that are typically seen on sand dunes.

Shortly after the publication of this series, Julian Oberbeck and Paul Nadalack made their own attempt at recreating a Journey-inspired scene in Unity. You can see in the thread below how they have improved the glitter reflection to have more temporal coherence. You can read more about their implementation on IndieBurg’s article Mip Map Folding.

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Journey Sand Shader: Specular Reflection

This is the fourth part of the online series dedicated to Journey Sand Shader.

In this fourth post, we will focus on the specular reflections that make the dunes look like an ocean of sand.

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Journey Sand Shader: Sand Normal

This is the third part of the online series dedicated to Journey Sand Shader.

In this third post, we will focus on the normal mapping that will turn smooth 3D models into sandy dunes.

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Journey Sand Shader: Diffuse Colour

This is the second part of the online series dedicated to Journey Sand Shader.

In this second post we will focus on the lighting model used in the game, and how to recreate it in Unity.

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A Journey Into Journey’s Sand Shader

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.

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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.

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: 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:

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.

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