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.

Example Shaders

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.
• ENVO realtime environment shader by Aurel Manea<
  > From the Polycount thread ENVO realtime environment shader for 3d studio max.
• 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

Beginner

• 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.
• Shaders by Ben Cloward These shaders are a bit outdated and there are more up-to-date shaders to learn from, but Ben's shaders are what got many artists started on the path and are still a solid learning resource.
• Shaders by Rob Galanakis (right side of page) Some well-commented shaders that cover a variety of intermediate to advanced topics.
• Shaders for Artists: What are shaders and what do they do?
• Blending functions: Photoshop functions converted into HLSL. Understanding the math behind Photoshop will give greater insight into how pixel shaders work, and the short functions will help teach HLSL syntax.
• NormalVector, BinormalVector, and TangentVector are the three vectors that make up surface vector information, and a basic understanding is essential to understand lighting.
• Glossary (Shaders): A listing of terms used in shaders, such as half angle, glossiness, etc.
• UnitVector: What is a unit vector (also known as a normalized vector), and why is it important to us?
• NormalMap, the Wiki page on normal mapping, provides a comprehensive overview on the subject.
• Ben Cloward's Normal Mapping Tutorial: One of the best sources for people getting into shaders and who want a better understanding of what a normal map is. Covers the basics of lighting, how normal maps work, and the process of creating and applying normal maps.

Intermediate

• 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.
• Parallax mapping types: An article briefly covering the different techniques for parallax mapping (offset, parallax occlusion, relief, etc.), with links to the papers detailing them and other related resources.
• Beautiful, yet Friendly: Article by Guillaume Provost, which explains the behind-the-scenes technical aspect of shaders. A must-read when one starts to think about efficiency, math, and hardware.
• Shading models describe the different models, such as Blinn, Phong, etc.
• DDS and Normal map compression explain the best ways to save and compress normal maps and other textures.

Advanced

• Vertex skinning: An article about using the shader to deform skinned meshes. Ubiquitous in games now-a-days, but knowledge of it can help unlock what else is possible in the vertex shader.
• [[[MaxScript|DirectX Scripted Material Plugin]]]: A tutorial requiring intermediate to advanced HLSL and MaxScript knowledge. It will allow you to build your own unrestricted interfaces for DirectX 9 Shaders in Max, instead of using the default auto-generated UI.

Tools

To create and edit shaders, most people use a text editor (like Notepad ++) to write them and a 3d program (a game engine, 3ds Max, Maya, etc.) to view them. For those who are new to shaders the following tools provide a graphical user interface for easier creation:

• 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. Shader FX is very useful for the beginner artist to get his head around the concepts of creating shaders, with its great node-based interface, and it is useful for the more advanced shader writer to understand how certain nodes work. Kees and Ben are leaders in shaders and analyzing their raw and exported HLSL code will help authors understand many cutting edge techniques, such as sub-surface scattering, fur, and glow. Free for individuals and companies smaller than 2 employees.
• ShaderFusion by Kurt 'commander_keen' Loeffler<
  > An excellent node-based shader editor for Unity.
• mental mill Standard Edition is a standalone tool that "allows the user to write and edit shader code, and visually debug the shader by interactively inspecting variables while stepping through the code. As well, the user can export shaders for use in DCC and CAD applications through the supported, customizable back-end formats such as CgFX, HLSL, and GLSL." The more limited Artist Edition is free for personal use, and comes bundled with 3ds Max 2010.
• NVIDIA's FX Composer is a shader authoring toolset.
• AMD's RenderMonkey is a shader authoring toolset.