Summary

In this chapter, we explored a series of simple 2D shaders and effects.

We first discussed how to use Unity’s built-in Shader Graph Nodes to easily tweak the colors of a sprite globally, for example by changing the hue or saturation. We then saw why color-swapping can be useful and how we can implement it via the Shader Graph editor or HLSL code before talking about dynamic pixelation for quick pixel-art approximation.

After that, we focused on 2D outlines and gradually built several shaders that implemented more and more complex effects, starting from a simple pixel-perfect stroke up to an animated emissive contour. We also took this opportunity to have a look at post-processing in URP and how we can use the built-in tools of the render pipeline to add a Bloom effect and make our HDR emissive colors glow in the scene.

Finally, we worked on a few shader utilities that could be used directly in a video game to show a specific character state with a texture overlay...