Learn Unity Shaders from Scratch

Learn Unity Shaders from Scratch, available at $74.99, has an average rating of 4.31, with 69 lectures, 9 quizzes, based on 436 reviews, and has 9977 subscribers.

You will learn about The mysteries of writing Unity shaders You will be gently introduced to how to approach the problem of creating a custom shader. You will learn the full details of the HLSL shader language. You will learn to use the Surface Shader syntax to add custom shaders on top of Unity lighting. You will start with simple unlit 2D shaders and work up to advanced effects such as volumetric shaders and clipping. Learn to create shaders that work with the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) Learn to use Shader Graph to create your shaders This course is ideal for individuals who are Unity developers who need to go beyond the shaders available on the platform. or Developers keen to learn the HLSL shading language for other development platforms such as Unreal. It is particularly useful for Unity developers who need to go beyond the shaders available on the platform. or Developers keen to learn the HLSL shading language for other development platforms such as Unreal.

Enroll now: Learn Unity Shaders from Scratch

Summary

Title: Learn Unity Shaders from Scratch

Price: $74.99

Average Rating: 4.31

Number of Lectures: 69

Number of Quizzes: 9

Number of Published Lectures: 69

Number of Published Quizzes: 9

Number of Curriculum Items: 78

Number of Published Curriculum Objects: 78

Original Price: $89.99

Quality Status: approved

Status: Live

What You Will Learn

The mysteries of writing Unity shaders

You will be gently introduced to how to approach the problem of creating a custom shader.

You will learn the full details of the HLSL shader language.

You will learn to use the Surface Shader syntax to add custom shaders on top of Unity lighting.

You will start with simple unlit 2D shaders and work up to advanced effects such as volumetric shaders and clipping.

Learn to create shaders that work with the Universal Render Pipeline (URP)

Learn to use Shader Graph to create your shaders

Who Should Attend

Unity developers who need to go beyond the shaders available on the platform.

Developers keen to learn the HLSL shading language for other development platforms such as Unreal.

Target Audiences

Unity developers who need to go beyond the shaders available on the platform.

Developers keen to learn the HLSL shading language for other development platforms such as Unreal.

In this course we’re going to look at Unity ShaderLaband the HLSL shading languageto create amazing shaders.

Maybe you are

a developer struggling to bring to life a particular game feature because it needs a custom shader.

a developer who always wanted to create custom shaders but was too scared to start.

a developer wanting to add some custom post-processing effects to your 3d renders.

Unity ShaderLab is how you create custom shaders. It comes in 3 flavours, fixed function, vertex-fragment and surface shaders. We won’t be looking at the fixed function route in this course as it is effectively a legacy option and you want to learn modern best practice. The code syntax is based on the C language, but fear not, we will assume you have literally no knowledge of this language at all and we will, as the course title states, learn this from scratch. A shader uses the GPU ( the Graphics Processing Unit) to handle multiple programs at the same time, so it is unbelievably fast.

We will start from really simple examples and progress slowly through each stage of developing a custom shader. You will be able to play with the shader code using Visual Studio, or another code editor if you prefer. You can experiment with different valuesto see the impact it has on the end result.

Unity shaders are split into vertex shaders and fragment shaders and we will focus initially on the fragment shader, working essentially in a 2d environment. With dozens of shaders in the course resources you will learn the language in gentle stages. Before moving on to use Unity’s surface shader syntax to easily include complex lighting.

Once you’re comfortable with simple shaders we will cover advanced effects such as tessellation, transparency, using the stencil buffer and post-processing.

Creating your own shaders means understanding the HLSL language and that is the aim of the course. You could search for a suitable shader on ShaderToy or ShaderFrog and then try to adapt the code. But without knowing the language you’re going to find that difficult to do. To really be effective you need to know about the  language, shaping functions, tiling and lighting calculations. To do this you will need to follow along with the course and complete the many challenges suggested. At the end you will then be able to create any shader that you can imagine.

Now featuring sections on URP Shadersand Shader Graph

As usual there is a 30 day money back guarantee. So you have nothing to lose. Let’s get shading today!

What students say about the course

“Great course. Took this as a refresher to get back into shaders. Everything you need is provided. Both starting scenes for each lecture and also completed ones if you get stuck with code errors. Nice learning curve. Everything is well explained. No long boring slideshows. Also plenty of challenges, which I like and find very useful in assisting your learning. Very clear audio and code. So no problems following along and plenty to take in. Also Nicholas is very helpful with your Q&A’s. Highly recommended.”

“The information presented in this course is fantastic. The tutor has a great personality, and I can’t stress enough how enjoyablehe makes this course.”

“It is fantastic. You need a little bit of math to understand it better but with attention and repetition it will be easy to anyone. Thanks a lot professor!”

“Exceptional good structured step by step course. Background knowledge is provided on spot when necessary. Nik has a special encouraging attitude and he is fun to listen to. Thanks!”

“The best shaders instructor I’ve seen so far. His lessons are clear, practical, and the way he talks keeps the student motivated with the right amount of humour but without losing focus! I’m glad I’ve found this course.”

“I would say that this was the best course I have bought on Udemy so far.”

Course Curriculum

Chapter 1: Introduction

Lecture 1: Welcome to the course

Lecture 2: Introduction

Lecture 3: Parallel Processing

Lecture 4: Cg is not C#

Chapter 2: First Steps

Lecture 1: Your first shader

Lecture 2: Working with vectors in Cg

Lecture 3: Using the Properties section

Lecture 4: Blending colours

Lecture 5: Using step and smoothstep

Chapter 3: Shaping Functions

Lecture 1: Drawing a circle

Lecture 2: Drawing a square

Lecture 3: Moving our shape

Lecture 4: Moving the square with the mouse

Lecture 5: Moving the shape over time

Lecture 6: Rotating the square

Lecture 7: Changing the rotation centre and scaling

Lecture 8: Tiling

Lecture 9: Drawing circles

Lecture 10: Drawing lines

Lecture 11: Combining lines

Lecture 12: Showing a polygon

Lecture 13: Creating a brick pattern

Chapter 4: Noise

Lecture 1: #pragmas

Lecture 2: What’s all that noise?

Lecture 3: Using noise to create a fire shader

Lecture 4: Using noise to create wood and marble

Chapter 5: Textures

Lecture 1: A simple use of a texture image

Lecture 2: Ripple the image

Lecture 3: Blend between textures.

Chapter 6: Vertex shaders

Lecture 1: Turning a box into a sphere

Lecture 2: Using the Unity lighting – Lambert

Lecture 3: Creating a ball of lava

Chapter 7: Surface Shaders

Lecture 1: ShaderLab Surface Shaders – an introduction

Lecture 2: Bump mapping

Lecture 3: Fresnel shading

Lecture 4: Environment mapping

Lecture 5: Adding a bump map to a reflective surface

Lecture 6: Blinn Phong lighting

Lecture 7: Custom lighting

Lecture 8: Standard lighting

Lecture 9: Adding a vertex function to a surface shader

Chapter 8: Advanced effects

Lecture 1: Lighting in a vertex, fragment shader

Lecture 2: A position location shader

Lecture 3: Drawing a cross on the floor

Lecture 4: Tessellation

Lecture 5: Using the stencil buffer

Lecture 6: Clipping the output

Chapter 9: Transparent shaders

Lecture 1: Alpha transparency in a surface shader

Lecture 2: Space Pirate turns to glass

Chapter 10: Volumetric Shaders

Lecture 1: Volumetric Rendering

Lecture 2: Using textures in the render

Chapter 11: Post Processing

Lecture 1: Preparing for post processing

Lecture 2: Night goggles effect

Chapter 12: URP Shaders

Lecture 1: Migrating to URP

Lecture 2: Converting a custom unlit shader to URP

Lecture 3: Working with Properties and includes

Lecture 4: More tips when updating shaders for URP

Lecture 5: A Toon Shader

Lecture 6: Using URP Lighting in a Shader

Lecture 7: Post Processing using Renderer Features

Lecture 8: Stencils

Chapter 13: Shader Graph

Lecture 1: A first example

Lecture 2: Rim lighting

Lecture 3: Reflections

Lecture 4: Custom Functions

Lecture 5: Refractive Glass

Chapter 14: Conclusion

Lecture 1: Summary

Lecture 2: Useful links

Lecture 3: Bonus lecture

Instructors

Nicholas Lever
Game developer

Rating Distribution

1 stars: 8 votes

2 stars: 8 votes

3 stars: 37 votes

4 stars: 121 votes

5 stars: 262 votes

Frequently Asked Questions

How long do I have access to the course materials?

You can view and review the lecture materials indefinitely, like an on-demand channel.

Can I take my courses with me wherever I go?

Definitely! If you have an internet connection, courses on Udemy are available on any device at any time. If you don’t have an internet connection, some instructors also let their students download course lectures. That’s up to the instructor though, so make sure you get on their good side!