The Book of Shaders

by Patricio Gonzalez Vivo

This is a gentle step-by-step guide through the abstract and complex universe of Fragment Shaders.

Contents

• About this book

• Getting started

  • What is a shader?
  • “Hello world!”
  • Uniforms
  • Running your shader

• Algorithmic drawing

  • Shaping functions
  • Colors
  • Shapes
  • Matrices
  • Patterns

• Generative designs

  • Random
  • Noise
  • Fractional brownian motion

• Image processing:

  • What is a texture?
  • Image operations
  • Kernel convolutions
  • Filters
  • Others effects

• Simulation

  • Pingpong
  • Conway
  • Ripples
  • Water color
  • Reaction diffusion
  • Voronoi

• 3D graphics

  • Lights
  • Normal-maps
  • Bump-maps
  • Ray marching
  • Environmental-maps (spherical and cube)
  • Reflect and refract

• Appendix

  • How can I navigate this book offline?
  • How to use this book in a classroom with RaspberryPi?
  • How to print this book?

About the Author

Patricio Gonzalez Vivo (1982, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a New York based artist and developer. He explores interstitial spaces between organic and synthetic, analog and digital, individual and collective. In his work he uses code as an expressive language with the intention of developing a better together.

Patricio studied and practiced psychotherapy and expressive art therapy. He holds an MFA in Design & Technology from Parsons The New School, where he now teaches. Currently he works as a Graphic Engineer at Mapzen making openSource mapping tools.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my wife Jen Lowe, for her unconditional support, help and time editing this book.

Thanks Scott Murray for the inspiration and advice.

Thanks Karim Naaji for contributing with support, good ideas and code.