Shader Basics, Blending & Textures • Shaders for Game Devs [Part 1]

Welcome to my three part lecture on shader coding for game devs 💖 I hope you'll find this useful in your game dev journey!

If you are enjoying this series, please consider supporting me on Patreon!

00:00:00 - What are shaders?
00:03:00 - Case study/screenshots from FFXIV, Overwatch & more
00:37:42 - The Structure of a Shader
00:42:49 - Vertex shader
00:47:09 - Fragment shader
00:49:32 - Shader vs Material
00:51:29 - A first look at shader code
01:02:17 - Vertex Normals
01:06:17 - Interpolators
01:15:59 - Data types (fixed vs half vs float)
01:21:32 - Fragment shader output
01:24:31 - Swizzling
01:33:48 - Passing data from vertex shader to fragment shader
01:42:04 - Space transformation w. Matrices
01:47:07 - UV coordinates & manipulation
01:53:34 - Gradients
02:01:06 - Values outside of 0 to 1
02:09:20 - Triangle waves using math
02:12:04 - Preprocessor constants
02:25:28 - Pattern manipulation
02:31:48 - Blending Modes
02:39:42 - Depth buffer & depth testing (ZTest)
02:56:40 - Waves, ripples & vertex offsetting
03:12:07 - Textures
03:20:33 - World space coordinates
03:28:04 - Texture masking
03:37:33 - Isotropic mip maps
03:42:17 - Anisotropic mip maps
03:44:36 - Point vs bilinear vs trilinear filtering
03:49:54 - Final questions

✫ Video Production by Higher Vision:

[David-tymy]

I figured the algorithm out, when it is really late literally all recommended videos are like 2-4+ hours long, because it already knows you are gonna stay that long

[unknownunicorn]

WHERE DID THIS VIDEO COME FROM AND WHY IS IT SUDDENLY PLAYING WHILE I WAS ABOUT TO WAKE UP FROM SLEEPING?!?! 😭😭 I know I did not click on this, help.

[Monkeyman]

This is the third time I’m waking up to this

[MatthewAWinston]

This is the most epic "developer" content ever.

The style of delivery is only possible for those who live and breathe their material.
Freya knows her stuff, and how to teach.
Emphasizing what matters. Integrating feedback and questions, while willing to say no, to honor your course intentions.

I always learn new details, and deeper understanding of the things I thought I knew.

Thank You!

[Marksverhere]

Heres a fact: you woke up from a deep sleep and this was playing

[Theratnoob]

I fell asleep and the last thing I watch was this 💀

[gsemaj]

I know I’m late to the party but I just wanted to let you know that everything about this video is perfect. My university graphics class didn’t give us any hands-on experience with shaders and this totally filled the gap. Your pacing, explanations and visualizations were on point. Thank you so much for making this!!

[loicbouvier]

Everything I ever wanted to know about shader is condensed here. You somehow managed to transform an aspect of game dev that seemed scary and shaddy at first into something actually fun and pretty simple :)) Thank you so much!

[qma]

- I don't have the words to express my gratitude for sharing such a detailed course for free. The university i'm studying to be a game developer at, which charges $1, 500 a year, didn't even teach me the basics like C# interfaces and importing assets into Unity, let alone shaders. As a non-native english speaker i had no problems undertanding you, nor was i bored

- I am insanely happy i've stumbled upon your channel and this video specifically. Perhaps my career will be built through you and what you do. Thank you in advance :)

[Jujikun]

Who else woke up to this?

Edited: Crazy how many we are at this point

[dorondavid]

You explain things very well!

What most people miss out when making videos about subjects is they explain topics and then jump to another topic right after.

You bring up a topic, give examples, explain it, reiterate what it is with references to real world items, THEN move on.

Well done!

[CorporalDanLives]

This > College courses I’ve taken. Freya is awesome; also THANK YOU for editing these down from the original stream, this is utterly invaluable stuff.

[nucleartide]

I watched through the entire 4 hours, typed out + ran all the shaders in Unity, and learned SO much. Excited to dig into the exercise!

Thanks a bunch for everything, Freya! This course will be invaluable for many shader beginners to come.

[aritradattagupta]

Well this is hands-down the most intuitive and in-depth content on shaders. Can't believe this is free. Freya absolutely knows what she is doing. It's like this information is rooted deep inside her skin and now she doesn't even need to think about it while teaching others. I can only wish and hope to be like her one day. Couldn't thank you enough for this.

[selgesel]

As a newcomer I must admit that I was at first put off by the length of the video, and wondered why she wouldn't just cut it into parts and upload them individually. But when I did start watching, I got completely hooked. I don't know what kind of wizardry this is but the content just flows so incredibly smoothly and naturally that cutting the video into parts would ruin it.

Watching great videos like this makes me want to quit my daily job to have virtually unlimited uninterrupted time so I could watch them anytime I want and focus on making a game myself.

[grrsa]

I've been watching this sporadically through the week. I've never understood the fundamentals so well before! Excellent explanations.

[konradklocek]

Thank you so much, I work as gamedev profesionally, but I've always had a problem with shaders. Your style, clear explanations made me not fear about writing and understanding shaders - all the best!

[benrogers]

You're so skilled at distilling information on the fly, organized into a logical flow appropriate for listeners who may not be familiar with the subject, explaining jargon as you go rather than assuming everyone knows it, etc. That's an extremely valuable set of abilities! Thank you for taking the effort to create this content and share it!!

[brunofruchard]

So awesome to get such a complete lecture for free on the web 🤯
Thank you so much for the great work!

[SufferDYT]

This is what every Game Dev channel should strive to be. Unadulterated well-communicated actually useful information. You are appreciated.