I recently came across a very interesting GDC talk by Matt Nava on some of the tricks used in the art of ABZÛ, and I was really fascinated by it. Not because it featured anything super-complex and amazingly innovative, but because it featured some great ways technical art was used to solve problems. And those problems …
I always loved the look of a nice glitch effect in games. For a while now, I’ve been researching different implementations of glitch effects in various media, because I just could not wrap my head around how it’s done. The reason for that, is that in many cases it was implemented differently, and it was …
I’m still staying on the subject of manipulating UV coordinates to produce shapes and effects, and this time, I’m throwing a known concept in the mix: displacement. This shader is also going to be pretty simple, but it’s going to be a stepping stone for some of the future effects. Hopefully, it will also help …
It may seem silly, but when I first started working on image effects, I could not wrap my head around something as simple as stripes on a shader. I started by messing around with the color of the whole image and I couldn’t really think of how to use the coordinates of the screen to …
Before I got into shaders, I used to think that I had a good amount of insight for the techniques used in video games, and that I could think of how somebody would approach an effect or a mechanic. However, for a long time I just could not put my finger on how somebody would …
Moving once again outside the scope of image effects, today I have a very special shader for you. I hope you have heard of the game “Antichamber” at some point in your life. It’s a game that has one purpose: to mess with your mind. And it does so successfully. Probably one of the most …
I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for something new and different for me to talk about. All three of you (Hi, mom!). However, in this post I am not going to introduce anything new. Instead, I will combine some of the techniques discussed in previous posts to create an actual useful effect, for once. This …
Picking up where I left off, this post is the second and final part that concerns custom masks, and more specifically, ring shaped masks. This shader uses the same technique as the one shown in the first part in order to make a ring-shaped mask that has similar flexibility as its disk-shaped counterpart. In terms of …
I’ll be straight with you, this is one of the shader areas for which I’m not really comfortable to make tutorials. We’re treading on grounds of code that I can understand but not completely think to write on my own without a reference. The shader I will be demonstrating in this post is pretty small and simple, …
Still on the subject of displacement, this post is about some different stuff one can do with a displacement image effect. Specifically, the shader I will be demonstrating recreates a wavy displacement effect that changes over time, as you can see in the GIF below: It’s a very simple effect that may or may not …