This article is an attempt to introduce Unity’s new Entity Component System (ECS) to those who are unaware of its existence. ECS is one part of DOTS – the Data Oriented Technology Stack, which also contains the C# Job System and the Burst Compiler. ECS can be described in two ways; ridiculous performance increase and/or compact size. It is a new way to code, utilizing all of the cores available. The other two components of DOTS allow for similar performance…
Through my previous articles on shaders, I have worked exclusively with Surface functions to handle the shader logic. However, this function only handles certain aspects of rendering. What happens when you run your compiler, is that the surface function gets turned into what are called Vertex– and “per-pixel (or Fragment)”-functions. Compiling is basically like having a whole burger, then dropping it on the ground, witnessing its transformation into buns and patties before your very eyes. But what does vertex and…
As I covered in the previous article about shader anatomy, there are a few different lighting models to choose from, if you are not creating your own. Depending on the model, you will have access to different properties in your surface function. But what exactly is a lighting model, and how can we use them for cool stuff? Because that’s really what we’re here for, all the cool beans. A lighting model is really just an algorithm, which looks at…
In this article I will go through the shader I wrote for our Ecosystem student project, to implement cel shading. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, this rendering method gives a black outline to everything, giving it a cartoony look. Before I go any further, you should be aware that I assume baseline familiarity with technical rendering terms and shader basics. If you want to explore shader programming from the complete basics, I highly recommend giving this course a…