Shaders
Read these pages in order, or jump to the one you need.
- Shaders for artistsTopicWhat a shader is, how node-based material graphs in Unreal, Unity, Godot and Blender turn into shader code, the nodes environment artists use every day, how to judge instruction cost, what shader permutations are, and when to ask a technical artist.
- Master materials and instancesTopicBuilding a few parent materials with parameters and switches, and making every surface in a project an instance of them; how instances, static switches and material functions work in Unreal, the equivalents in Unity and Godot, how to organise a project, and the debate between one uber-material and several focused masters.
- Material layers and SubstrateTopicBuilding surfaces by stacking simple materials (concrete, paint, dirt, moss) with masks, either live in the shader or composited and baked offline; Unreal's Material Layers and Substrate, Unity's Layered Lit, the studio systems behind The Order 1886 and Gears of War 4, and how to choose.
- Texture arraysKey termA stack of same-size, same-format textures that a shader picks from by index; how arrays differ from atlases and 3D textures, why terrain and layered materials use them, the rules and limits (custom shaders, streaming), and how to make one in Unreal, Unity and Godot.