Category Shaders

What is a Shader?

A shader is a bit of computer code that is commonly used to describe how a surface will be rendered. It takes some inputs (textures, vertices, view angles, etc.), does some changes to them, then tells the game renderer to render them. For more info see Portal:Shaders on the Tech Artists Wiki.

Popular 3ds Max Shaders

(in alphabetical order)

• 3ds Max viewport shader by Laurens "Xoliul" Corijn.<
  > More info in the Polycount thread Xoliul's 3DS Max Viewport Shader.
• 3Point Shader by 3 Point Studios<
  > Shader with many options, including near-perfect results for 3ds Max generated normal maps. See the Polycount thread 3Point Shader Lite - Shader material editor and Quality Mode normalmaps for 3ds Max.
• Agusturinn Shader Demo by Wang "RTshaders" Jing.<
  > Shader features: "One UV texture, Two point lights, Diffuse map(include alpha which control transparency), AO(ambient occlusion) map or Lightmap share the same channel, Normal map,Specular map,Specular level map,Gloss map,Emissive map, Two type of Cubemap---One is diffuse cubemap for generating IBL(image based lighting), the other is enviroment cubemap for reflection."
• Ben Cloward Shaders by Ben Cloward.<
  > He has a bunch of HLSL shaders available for normal mapping, ambient occlusion, car paint, skin, etc.
• BRDF shader (3ds Max version) ported by Christoph "CrazyButcher" Kubisch. <
  > Original BRDF shader for Maya by Brice Vandemoortele and Cedric Caillaud. More info in the Polycount thread Free Maya/max cgfx/fx Shader. Update: New version here with many updates, including object-space normal maps, relief mapping, self-shadowing, etc.
• MoP Texture Blender by Paul "MoP" Greveson<
  > This shader uses blendmodulate for vertex blending with per-pixel detail. From the Polycount thread The Snow and Ice of Uncharted2?.
• Paragalis Shader Demo by Wang "RTshaders" Jing.<
  > Shader features: "Post effect, 3dsmax2008/2009 viewport shadowmap, Subsurface scattering, Cubemap Image based lighting, Diffuse(alpha channel control opacity),Normal map,Ao map/Light map,Specular,Specular lever(mask),Gloss etc., Shadermodel 2.x compatible for AMD ATI card."
• SSS Skin Shader by J.I. Styles.<
  > "The aim of this shader is to emulate all the perceptual qualities of realistic skin like translucency (sss), fresnal specular, gloss, oiliness, etc - kludging what I can to produce fast yet realistic looking results."
• TF2 Shader for 3ds Max and Toon/Comic Shader for 3ds Max by Till "Rollin" Maginot.<
  > More info in the Polycount thread TF2 and TOON realtime viewport shader (3ds max).

Popular Maya Shaders

(in alphabetical order)

• BRDF shader for Maya by Brice Vandemoortele and Cedric Caillaud<
  > More info in the Polycount thread Free Maya/max cgfx/fx Shader. Update: New version here with many updates, including object-space normal maps, relief mapping, self-shadowing, etc.
• KoddeShader by Kostas "Kodde" Gialitakis<
  > Has several features such as normal mapping, specular, gloss, reflections, ambient cube, parallax, etc. More info in the Polycount thread "KoddeShader", a Maya CGFX shader. Update: New version here including updates such as blended normals for skin, cube map mip level parameters for blurring reflections and ambient light, 2-pass transparency support, etc.
• lcNextGenShader by Leonardo "chronic" Covarrubias<
  > Has many techniques and parameters, including normal mapping, specular, ambient env cube, SSS, etc.

Creating Shaders

• The Tech-Artists.Org Shaders Portal<
  > A ton of great information about creating shaders.
• TF2 Shading in UT3 by Steffen "Neox" "polyphobia" Unger<
  > Shows how the Team Fortress 2 look can be emulated using a shader network in Unreal Engine 3.
• Shader FX by Lumonix<
  > This is a full-featured real-time shader editor for 3ds Max. It allows artists with no previous programming experience to build complex HLSL or CG FX shaders, using a graphical schematic interface to wire nodes together.
• ShaderFusion by Kurt 'commander_keen' Loeffler<
  > An excellent node-based shader editor for Unity.
• CG Academy HLSL Shader Creation series by Ben Cloward<
  > An excellent 3-part series on making HLSL shaders for 3ds Max (Can easily be transferred to Maya too).
• Eat3D's "Shader Production - Writing Custom Shaders with CGFX" A video tutorial DVD with Luiz Kruel that guides you through writing your own shaders, primarily with the CGFX shader language in Maya. DVD release was September 14, 2011.

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