Coding in Unity: Introduction to Shaders
What you'll learn
- Program surface shaders - Unity's approach to making it easier to write lit shaders.
- Code lower level fragment and vertex shaders.
- Program post-processing images effects.
- Use your new knowledge to create your own, unique shaders and game feel.
- Understand Unity's ShaderLab and CG/HLSL.
- Write your own shaders for Unity's built-in Render Pipeline.
- Create your own custom lighting
Requirements
- You should have and know how to use Unity 5.6 or above (the free version is fine).
- You should be able to program in C#.
- You should be familiar with basic mathematical functions like sin and cos, or be willing to learn about them.
- You need to have Blender installed as the downloadable materials contain .blend files.
Description
Learn the basic concepts and language you will need to program your own shaders and image effects for Unity's built-in render pipeline, for Unity 5 or above.
Learn and Understand Shaders with this Unity Course.
Learn about the different properties of a mesh that can be accessed and changed via a shader.
Write your own vertex and fragment, and surface shaders.
Create your own image effects.
Write custom lighting models.
Understand ShaderLab and CG/HLSL.
Make your game look unique using shaders.
In this course, you will learn the basics of programming shaders, from simple colour changes to whole screen image effects. We'll go through the different types of shader, Unity's quirks and in-built functions, and the different bits of code that make up a shader, before writing a full surface shader with a texture, normal map, metallic and emissive effects. We'll also look at writing a custom inspector for your shader. Once we've covered these basics, we'll look at creating an number of image effects, custom lighting models including cel shading, a sprite shader with a sway effect, and a dissolve effect.
A common criticism of Unity is that games made with the engine all have a similar look. Combat this by writing your own shaders rather than relying on Unity's inbuilt ones - learn how to improve the look and feel of your game.
By the end of this course, you will understand the basics of shader coding and will be able to create your own shaders. Source code is included to help you on your way.
This course is designed for people who can already use Unity and can program in C#, but who have no previous experience of programming shaders.
I present examples of increasing difficulty for each type of shader (surface, vertex/fragment and image effect) designed to help you to understand how shaders work so that you can be confident in creating your own effects.
For extra support, you can ask questions in the Q&A section, and I’ve provided the completed code examples for download in each Section. You’ll receive a certificate of completion once you finish the course.
Who this course is for:
- Intermediate level Unity developers who want to learn how to code their own shaders from scratch.
- People with no shader coding experience.
- This course is not for people new to Unity or C#.
- This course is not for people wanting to learn Unity's Shader Graph.
- People wanting to create their own shaders for Unity's built-in Render Pipeline.
Instructor
- 4.1 Instructor Rating
- 1,794 Reviews
- 12,440 Students
- 3 Courses
I'm Jenny, a freelance and indie game developer with over 6 years of professional programming experience. I have a Masters degree in Physics with Astrophysics and a PhD in Quantum Information.
I've released a number of games and enjoy teaching and sharing the knowledge I've gained. I've worked with General Interactive Co. to code and design a winemaking tycoon game called Terroir and a mystery/adventure/management game called Chinatown Detective Agency. I'm also making Cultivate: Before Time, a farming meets mystery game with time travel and dinosaurs!
My Udemy courses are aimed at those learning game development - whether that's coding or game design.