It's time to stop thinking that shaders are magical. You can use shaders to turn data into
stunning visual effects and get your hands dirty by building your own shader with this
step-by-step introduction to shader development for game and graphics developers. Learn how to
make shaders that move tint light up and look awesome all without cracking open a math
textbook. Practical Shader Development teaches the theory behind how shaders work. The book
also shows you how to apply that theory to create eye-popping visual effects. You'll learn to
profile and optimize those effects to make sure your projects keep running quickly with all
their new visuals. You'll learn good theory good practices and without getting bogged down in
the math. Author Kyle Halladay explains the fundamentals of shader development through simple
examples and hands-on experiments. He teaches you how to find performance issues in shaders you
are using and then how to fix them. Kyle explains (and contrasts) how to use the knowledge
learned from this book in three of the most popular game engines today. What You'll Learn
Understand what shaders are and how they work Get up to speed on the nuts and bolts of writing
vertex and fragment shaders Utilize color blending and know how blend equations work Know the
coordinate spaces used when rendering real-time computer graphics Use simple math to animate
characters simulate lights and create a wide variety of visual effects Find and fix
performance problems in shaders See how three popular game engines (Unity UE4 Godot) handle
shaders Who This Book Is For Programmers who are interested in writing their own shaders but do
not know where to start anyone who has ever seen shader code on a forum and wished they knew
how to modify it just a little bit to fit into their own projects and game developers who are
tired of using the default shaders found in the game engines they are using. The book is
especially useful for those who have been put off by existing shader tutorials which introduce
complex math and graphics theory before ever getting something on the screen.
