Colored Outline Shader in Unity

It seems like I’m on a roll with outline shaders! I’ve already written a basic cel shader with outline tutorial and an animated dotted outline shader, and now I’m doing this colored outline.

The special thing about the color of this outline is that it’s using the color of the texture, so that the outline color always matches the pixel it’s closest to. I find it’s a common tool used by 2D artists to make outlines feel more natural, as opposed to using a solid color like black for the whole outline.

Here’s an example of the difference it makes with an example from 2D pixel art from u/croakiee on Reddit:

outlineEx

This tutorial teaches you how to do this effect in 3D.

IMPORTANT: Since I already went over the basics of how to do the outline here, I’m not going to repeat that explanation in this tutorial. Do the basic tutorial first if you’re not sure how to create an outline at all.

Here’s the full code for the shader for reference, under a non-commercial open-source license:

->> Link to full code for Unity Colored Outline Shader

Also, The 3D model is from this free asset pack.

Now, on with the tutorial!

Continue reading Colored Outline Shader in Unity

2D Reflective Water Shader in Unity

Hey, y’all! My friends Kytana Le, Lucien Ye, and I created a chill, atmospheric, color-based puzzle game called The Endless River during the 2018 Global Game Jam. I wrote all of the shaders used for this game (except for the bloom), and my favorite one is definitely the reflective water shader.

So, while it’s still fresh in my mind, I figured I’d write a tutorial about it! The waving effect is quite similar to the 3D water shader tutorial, but the reflectivity is a special Unity trick that I felt made it worth writing a whole tutorial about.

If y’all want to see another tutorial covering how I made the entire aesthetic for the game, including bloom, other post-processing effects (like the vignette), fog, animations, and other effects, please let me know!

If you have any other feedback or questions about these tutorials, don’t be afraid to PM me on Reddit, contact me on Twitter, or comment on this post ❤

For your reference during the tutorial, here’s the final code for this shader, under an open-source licence. The code isn’t my usual shader tutorial repository, but instead the repository for the whole game. 😉

-> Link to final code for Unity 2D Reflective Water Shader

On with the tutorial!

Continue reading 2D Reflective Water Shader in Unity

Intro to Procedural Geometry, Part 1

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I posted a poll to determine the content of this tutorial! With almost half the votes, an introduction to procedural geometry was the winner.

So, this tutorial will teach you the bare basics of creating procedural geometry in Unity!

Unity has a tutorial on creating a plane in code, but it’s lacking in pictures and assumes that you already know what “vertices” and “triangles” mean. A few other people have written good tutorials on procedural geometry, but I wanted to write one that easily flows into the other procedural geometry tutorials that I write.

Although this tutorial uses Unity, all of the concepts (other than the specific calls to Unity’s API) are applicable to most other engines.

This tutorial assumes you know:

  • Basics of using Unity (creating objects, attaching scripts, using the inspector)
  • How to code in C# (or at least a similar language)

This tutorial will teach you:

  • The high-level of how 3D geometry is represented in code (vertices and triangles)
  • How to use these concepts to create geometry with code
  • How to use Unity’s Mesh API to create geometry
  • How to create a plane mesh in code
  • How to create a 3D cube (part 2)
  • How normals & UVs work (part 3)
  • How to texture procedural meshes (part 4)

Here’s what we’re going to learn to create today! It’s not fancy, but it’s important to understand all of the basics before moving on.

planeScreenshot

Continue reading Intro to Procedural Geometry, Part 1

Waving Grass Shader in Unity

Hey y’all! Today, I want to show y’all how I made this wavy grass shader in Unity. The lighting is a simple cel shader, which I covered in a post on cel shading, so we’re going to focus on the vertex animation that creates the wave!

Shout-out to this Low-Poly Foliage asset pack, which is where I got the grass models from.

I took a bit of feedback from the Reddit posts I made about this blog! Redditor aramanamu had some great suggestions, a couple of which I got several times, so I decided to implement them in this post:

comment1

comment2

I hope this is what you were looking for! I highlighted code comments in orange, and I included in-progress screenshots for every step of this tutorial. ^^

If you have feedback about these tutorials, don’t be afraid to PM me on Reddit, contact me on Twitter, or comment on this post ❤

For your reference during the tutorial, here’s the final code for this shader, under an open-source licence:

-> Link to final code for Unity Grass Wave Shader

Now, on with the tutorial!

Continue reading Waving Grass Shader in Unity

Ice Shader in Unity

Hey y’all! Today, I want to show you how I created this ice / crystal shader. There are three parts to this effect:

  1. The transparency with opaque, white edges
  2. The iridescent bumpy texture
  3. The distortion effect behind the ice

All of these effects are reusable for other kinds of shaders.

For example, if you’re successful, you’ll be able to apply the distortion effect to anything, like the water shader!

watergif

For your reference during the tutorial, here’s the final code for the shader.

–> Link to final code for Unity Ice Shader

 

Continue reading Ice Shader in Unity

Animated Dotted Outline Shader in Unity

Earlier, I wrote a tutorial on how to create a cel shader with an outline effect. For the sake of not repeating that explanation, refer to that tutorial to learn how to draw the basic outline.

You can apply this outline effect to any kind of lighting or other shader properties, since it’s in its own pass.

Here’s the final code for you to reference:

–> Link to final code for Unity Dotted Outline Shader

Continue reading Animated Dotted Outline Shader in Unity

Cel Shader with Outline in Unity

Today, I want to cover two super popular topics for shaders in Unity:

  1. How to create cel-shaded lighting
  2. How to create an outline effect

In addition to this code, you may want to check out the Unity graphics settings for this tutorial, which are important for lighting a cel-shaded game well.

If you like this post, be sure to follow me on Twitter 🙂

If you’ve never written shader code before, or used Unity, you still may get plenty out of this post, because the algorithms used to write the cel shader and the outline are applicable to any shader. If you do write shader code in Unity, you’ll find the rest of the techniques extra helpful 🙂

This is the end result, applied to an adorable Boston Terrier model made by amazing artist Kytana Le:

finished dog shader

And here’s the full code for you to reference while following the tutorial:

–> Link to final code for the cel and outline shader

Continue reading Cel Shader with Outline in Unity

Unity Graphics Setup

Hey y’all, I want to share with you the settings I used related to rendering in Unity for these tutorials. These settings make a HUGE difference with respect to quality.

I highly encourage you to explore the meaning behind all of the settings I’m presenting to you. Read up on Forward vs. Deferred rendering; learn what anti-aliasing means; don’t just accept these settings and go. I’m still learning everything myself! And we’ll be much better off having power over these settings instead of constantly Googling why something isn’t working.

Continue reading Unity Graphics Setup

Dissolve Shader in Unity

After I posted my cel shader tutorial, I asked for more tutorial ideas on Twitter. A mutual of mine requested help:

Welp, here’s that tutorial, Brannan! XD It doesn’t have ALL of the qualities that you requested, but I think it does the trick for a magical-fade effect.

With this shader, you’ll be able to tune the color, speed, fade speed, size, and texture of the dissolve. For example, in the gif below, the green lingers longer, and the dissolve happens faster.

dissolve4

For reference, here’s the final code for the shader. Note that it includes code for a cel shader, so if you want to use the effect in your own lighting scheme, you’ll need to adapt this code for your needs.

–> Link to final code for Unity Dissolve Shader

Continue reading Dissolve Shader in Unity

Simple Water Shader in Unity

Heya, I’m Lin Reid, programmer on Limit Theory, and I’m going to show y’all how to make a water shader in Unity! This is totally non-Limit-Theory related… just writing some shaders for fun 😂

This tutorial is really a general graphics programming tutorial in disguise. The techniques we’re going to learn in this post- vertex animation and using depth textures- are basically applicable to any platform. However, I do go over a few of the quirks with getting camera depth textures to work in Unity so that you can make it work too.

These are the two possible end results, applied to an adorable Boston Terrier model made by artist Kytana Le (please ignore crappy gif quality):

Notice how both have a foam line where the dog touches the water (but with different styles for each) and animated waves. We’re going to learn how to do both. Let’s start with the foam line!

Also, for reference, here’s the complete code for the shader:

–> Link to final code for Unity Water Shader

UPDATE: I now also have a tutorial for an ice shader that covers a distortion effect that looks GREAT with this water shader, like in the gif below. Finish this tutorial first, then follow the ice shader to add the distortion pass! ;0

watergif

Continue reading Simple Water Shader in Unity