Godot Documentation: Introduction to Shaders series

Repository

https://github.com/godot/godot-docs

Details

These changes introduce a brand new series of tutorials to the shading section of the Godot official documentation. They were made in response to the comments of a few new users who were having trouble getting started with shaders and felt that the official documentation should have something to help the newest users get started.

The series is split into four parts.

What are shaders

This doc explains what shaders are and how they fit into game programming. Most importantly it explains the limitations of shaders. Hopefully this will help out new users who hear about how powerful shaders are but don't understand what they are.

Your first CanvasItem shader

This tutorial introduces readers to programming a CanvasItem shader (which is a 2D shader). It walks them through gently the process of setting up a shader in the editor and writing their first shader.

Your first Spatial shader

This tutorial introduces the reader to how shaders operate on meshes in 3D. Spatial shaders are relatively more complicated than CanvasItem shaders because they operate in 3 dimensions and interact with lights. This tutorial introduces the reader to making a heightmap using shaders and Godot's OpenSimplexNoise module.

Your first Spatial shader: part 2

Part 2 dives into some more advanced parts of programming shaders. In particular it introduces readers to the concept of Physically Based Rendering (PBR). PBR is a blanket term for equations that simulate the behaviour of light on surfaces. It is usually broken down into a few parameters. In Godot, we use two properties, Metallic and Roughness, to describe the surface of an object. You can see below how these two parameters can be used for a wide range of material behaviour.

ROUGHNESS increases from 0 to 1 from left to right while METALLIC increase from 0 to 1 from top to bottom.

The tutorial walks the user through the process of making interesting looking water by simply setting up material properties in the Godot fragment shader. It is a great example of how easy it is in Godot to create complex looking effects with very simple code.

Below is the water the user will have created at the end of the tutorial.

Components

Shaders are a great way to create complex looking VFX in games. However, they rely on a relatively difficult shader language (GLSL) which is similar to C. Many game developers are only comfortable with relatively high-level programming languages (like GDScript, the language that Godot uses, which is similar to Python). Accordingly, developers need to a gentle introduction to the programming of shaders to ease them into a language that would otherwise be incredibly difficult for them to use.

Godot provides many ways that make shaders easier to write. One is by providing built-in functionality that handles the heavy lifting for you (the built in PBR models). The other is by providing a more user-friendly interface to program shaders in (which include reloading shaders on the fly).

Links

Series main page
What are shaders
Your first CanvasItem shader
Your first Spatial shader
Your first Spatial shader: part 2

GitHub Proof of Authorship

• GitHub Account: https://github.com/clayjohn
• Pull Request: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-docs/pull/2323