Tag: graphics

Custom Diffuse Shader in Unity

If you want your game to have a unique aesthetic, a great way to accomplish that is to have all of your objects using a shader that you personally wrote for the game. The only lighting scheme I’ve written about so far is cel shading, but that’s not the only way to go about stylized looks!

So, I decided this tutorial series needed a post on diffuse shading. Lots of tutorials have already covered diffuse shading in lots of languages, so this post also has a few ideas for ways to improve and expand upon a basic diffuse shader.

In the header image, the watermelon slice is using Unity’s default diffuse shader; on the right, it’s using the shader we write during this tutorial!

We’re going after a stylized look, so the ideas presented here introduce some basic ideas and skip over others. This is certainly not the ‘best’ way to write a diffuse shader, and there arguably isn’t one single ‘best’ way- there’s just what’s best for your game!

For your reference, here’s the final code for the simple diffuse shader in Unity.

Now, on with the tutorial!

Continue reading Custom Diffuse Shader in Unity

Full Game Aesthetic Walk-Through

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. In the spirit of the Global Game Jam’s encouragement of knowledge-sharing, here’s a tutorial on how we made all of the visual effects in the game!

Firstly, here’s the entire Github repository for the whole Unity project. Feel free to download it and use the resources, as long as you include the same open-source license with your project.

I’m going to talk about how we chose the effects that we used and give a short overview of how to implement every effect. One of these effects uses a shader that’s controlled by gameplay code, so this tutorial should be a great example of how to integrate shaders into the overall aesthetic and the game mechanics for your games.

In addition, there are a couple of tutorials that cover the details how the shaders were written for some of the effects, as there’s more material than would fit in this tutorial:

Now, on with the tutorial!

Continue reading Full Game Aesthetic Walk-Through

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

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

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

Procedural Sphere / Ellipsoid Tutorial

DISCLAIMER #1: Code presented here is pseudocode that does NOT necessarily reflect production Limit Theory code.

DISCLAIMER #2: This tutorial assumes you have at least basic knowledge of 3D geometry and related math.

I’ve seen plenty of tutorials for procedural spheres online, but most of them present the pseudocode (or even worse, language-specific code) for a sphere without explaining why it works. But if you want to really learn how to create procedural meshes – especially creative ones like torii or mesh warps like stellation and extrusion – it helps massively to first understand how the simple ones work.

Continue reading Procedural Sphere / Ellipsoid Tutorial