Oct 20The Best Darn Grid Shader (Yet)For as long as I’ve been writing shaders, there’s been one specific shader I’ve always tried to write. And I’ve always failed at it for reason I could never fully understand. I’d wait a few years and try again with my new level of knowledge, get closer, and fail again…Shaders25 min readShaders25 min read
Apr 13, 2021Distinctive Derivative DifferencesPesky Problems with Procedural UVs — In my article on Sphere Impostors I talked a bit about two different issues that come up when using procedural UVs calculated in the fragment shader. And showed solutions for both. Unfortunately it seems one of those solutions has an Achilles’ heel. This article is about some alternative solutions I…Shaders28 min readShaders28 min read
Jan 10, 2021Rendering a Sphere on a QuadMaking the Sphere Impostor Feel More Competent — GPU raytracing is all the rage these days, so lets talk about about it! Today we’re going to raytrace a single sphere. Using a fragment shader. Yeah, I know. Not super fancy. You can do a search on Shadertoy and get hundreds of examples. There are even several great tutorials…Shaders36 min readShaders36 min read
Jul 18, 2020The Quest for Very Wide OutlinesAn Exploration of GPU Silhouette Rendering — On almost every project I’ve worked on, at some point someone comes out with a bit of graphic design concept art like this: My usual response is to sigh, and start explaining why we can’t do outlines like that. …Shaders29 min readShaders29 min read
May 28, 2020Progressing in CirclesExploring shader based circular progress bars for Unity games — Progress bars are a common element in UIs, and for various reasons it’s not uncommon for then to be circles or arcs. I’m going to go over the common ways most people will end up implementing this. And discuss why I did something else. The Usual Suspects Canvas Image This may be the most common…Unity3d16 min readUnity3d16 min read
Feb 3, 2020Generating Perfect Normal Maps for Unity (and Other Programs)And how to tell what’s wrong with your content pipeline. — Last Update: 7/17/20 Lets say you have an awesome high poly model an artist has been working on that you’re looking forward to getting into your game. They’ve been showing off screen grabs of the model in their content tools and it looks fantastic. …Unity3d20 min readUnity3d20 min read
Aug 10, 2019Sharper Mipmapping using Shader Based SupersamplingMipmapping is ubiquitous in real time rendering, but has limitations. This article is going to go into what mipmapping is, how it’s used, and how it can be made better. Warning: this page has about 72MB of Gifs! Medium also has a tendency to not load them properly, so if…Programming30 min readProgramming30 min read
Jul 11, 2018The Team Color ProblemTeam coloring or otherwise modifying the color of part of an object is a common use case for shaders. It’s also a use case that often has a surprisingly subtle issue that is usually either missed or left unsolved. Lets say we have a character model and we want to…Programming9 min readProgramming9 min read
Sep 17, 2017Normal Mapping for a Triplanar ShaderTriplanar mapping is a great solution for dealing with texturing on complex geometry that is difficult or impossible to use traditional UVs for with out obvious stretching and/or texture seams. It’s also a technique plagued by half hearted and straight up wrong implementations of normal mapping. edit: Note that the…Programming30 min readProgramming30 min read
Aug 12, 2017Anti-aliased Alpha Test: The Esoteric Alpha To CoverageAliasing is the bane of VR. We have several tools we use to try to remove, or at least reduce aliasing in real time graphics today. Tools like super sampling, temporal anti-aliasing (TAA), and multi sample anti-aliasing (MSAA). They all have their pros and cons, but there’s one tool I…Programming15 min readProgramming15 min read
