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Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

By : John P. Doran, Alan Zucconi

2.9 (8)

Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook

2.9 (8)

By: John P. Doran, Alan Zucconi

Overview of this book

Since their introduction to Unity, shaders have been seen as notoriously difficult to understand and implement in games. Complex mathematics has always stood in the way of creating your own shaders and attaining the level of realism you crave. Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook changes that by giving you a recipe-based guide to creating shaders using Unity. It will show you everything you need to know about vectors, how lighting is constructed with them, and how textures are used to create complex effects without the heavy math. This book starts by teaching you how to use shaders without writing code with the post-processing stack. Then, you’ll learn how to write shaders from scratch, build up essential lighting, and finish by creating stunning screen effects just like those in high-quality 3D and mobile games. You'll discover techniques, such as normal mapping, image-based lighting, and animating your models inside a shader. We'll explore how to use physically based rendering to treat light the way it behaves in the real world. At the end, we’ll even look at Unity 2018’s new Shader Graph system. With this book, what seems like a dark art today will be second nature by tomorrow.

Preface

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Sections

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Free Chapter

Post Processing Stack

Post Processing Stack

Introduction

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 mood with color grading

Creating a horror game look with fog

Creating Your First Shader

Creating Your First Shader

Introduction

Creating a basic Standard Shader

Adding properties to a shader

Using properties in a Surface Shader

Surface Shaders and Texture Mapping

Surface Shaders and Texture Mapping

Introduction

Diffuse shading

Accessing and modifying packed arrays

Adding a texture to a shader

Scrolling textures by modifying UV values

Creating a shader with normal mapping

Creating a transparent material

Creating a Holographic Shader

Packing and blending textures

Creating a circle around your terrain

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

Physically-Based Rendering

Physically-Based Rendering

Introduction

Understanding the metallic setup

Adding transparency to PBR

Creating mirrors and reflective surfaces

Baking lights in your scene

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

Fragment Shaders and Grab Passes

Fragment Shaders and Grab Passes

Introduction

Understanding Vertex and Fragment Shaders

Using the grab pass to draw behind objects

Implementing a Glass Shader

Implementing a Water Shader for 2D games

Mobile Shader Adjustment

Mobile Shader Adjustment

Introduction

Techniques to make shaders more efficient

Profiling your shaders

Modifying our shaders for mobile

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

Gameplay and Screen Effects

Gameplay and Screen Effects

Introduction

Creating an old movie screen effect

Creating a night vision screen effect

Advanced Shading Techniques

Advanced Shading Techniques

Introduction

Using Unity's built-in CgInclude files

Making your shader world in a modular way with CgInclude

Implementing a Fur Shader

Implementing Heatmaps with arrays

Shader Graph

Shader Graph

Introduction

Creating a Shader Graph project

Implementing a simple a Shader Graph

Exposing properties to the Inspector via Shader Graph

Implementing a glowing highlight system

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Preface

Unity 2018 Shaders and Effects Cookbook is your guide to becoming familiar with the creation of shaders and post-processing effects in Unity 2018. 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. Afterwards, we 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 2018 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 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 the understanding to add to them, accomplish new effects, and address performance needs. So, let's get started!

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