Last updated on Nov 28, 2024

What are some of the common shader types and techniques in game development?

Shaders are programs that run on the graphics card and control how the pixels on the screen are rendered. They are essential for creating realistic and immersive visuals in games, as well as adding special effects and artistic styles. In this article, you will learn about some of the common shader types and techniques in game development, and how they can enhance your game's graphics.

1 Vertex shaders

Vertex shaders are the first stage of the shader pipeline, and they operate on the individual vertices of the 3D models in your scene. They can manipulate the position, color, texture coordinates, and other attributes of the vertices, as well as perform calculations such as lighting, transformations, and animations. Vertex shaders can be used to create effects such as deformations, tessellation, wind, and water waves.

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Peter Matejovsky

Inventive Unreal C++ Developer with years of experience in the Training & Simulation field, VR/AR, Serious Games. I help companies with building better in-house software tools and improving their production capabilities.
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One quite often overlooked thing is that one can use vertex shaders to do computations that do not require that much precision as if done in pixel shader. In such cased speed gained from such optimizations can be quite substantial. Screens are getting bigger. Other cool things you can do with vertex shaders are full screen triangle or instanced point sprites.

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2 Pixel shaders

Pixel shaders are the second stage of the shader pipeline, and they operate on the individual pixels that are generated by the rasterization of the 3D models. They can determine the final color, brightness, transparency, and other properties of the pixels, as well as perform calculations such as shading, blending, fog, and reflections. Pixel shaders can be used to create effects such as textures, bump mapping, normal mapping, specular highlights, shadows, and post-processing.

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Eugen Brusilovskyy

Senior Rendering Engineer at Chaos
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When reading online resources about shaders, one can encounter a term "fragment shader", which means the same pipeline stage as "pixel shader". "Fragment" stage name is standardized for OpenGL and Vulkan APIs, while "pixel" is a Direct3D way to call it.

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3 Geometry shaders

Geometry shaders are an optional stage of the shader pipeline, and they operate on the primitive shapes (such as triangles and lines) that are formed by the vertices. They can create new primitives, modify existing ones, or discard them altogether, as well as output data to other stages of the pipeline. Geometry shaders can be used to create effects such as particle systems, fur, grass, decals, and instancing.

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4 Compute shaders

Compute shaders are a special type of shaders that are not part of the shader pipeline, but run independently on the graphics card. They can perform arbitrary computations on large sets of data, such as images, buffers, and textures, and communicate with other shaders and the CPU. Compute shaders can be used to create effects such as physics simulations, fluid dynamics, ray tracing, and image processing.

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Nicholas Karalis

BS + MS CS Student @ University of California, Riverside | Software Developer | Game Developer
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Compute Shaders are, in a way, one of the better options to run an expensive algorithm in parallel. Some significant disciplines that are especially useful for Compute Shaders are physics simulations, procedural generation, and image processing. Since your algorithm is being run on the GPU, Compute Shaders can be an extremely useful tool for optimizing runtime execution. There is an important key detail here though, parallelism. If your algorithm is not made to be run in parallel, then you will experience very little speedup when using a Compute Shader.

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Peter Matejovsky

Inventive Unreal C++ Developer with years of experience in the Training & Simulation field, VR/AR, Serious Games. I help companies with building better in-house software tools and improving their production capabilities.
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Let's not forget that compute shaders can be used for much more than just processing of graphics data, one can run physics simulations in them, culling or spatial queries. Multi-pass compute shaders can be very powerful for any type of data processing that can be done in parallel and such calculations are prime candidate for porting when GPU is available. Very often they will outperform pure CPU calculations which than can be freed to perform more specific calculus not suited for massive parallelization.

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5 Shader models

Shader models are specifications that define the features and capabilities of the shaders and the graphics card. They are usually numbered and have different versions for different platforms and APIs (such as DirectX and OpenGL). For example, shader model 5.0 is the latest version for DirectX 11, and supports features such as tessellation, geometry shaders, and compute shaders. Shader models are important to consider when developing games for different devices and systems, as they affect the performance and compatibility of your shaders.

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Muthanna Rebabah

Founder & Unity Developer at Kyami Studio Games specializing in immersive game development.
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Shader models define the features and capabilities of shaders and graphics hardware, with versions tied to platforms and APIs (e.g., DirectX, OpenGL). They impact performance and compatibility, supporting features like tessellation, geometry shaders, and compute shaders, essential for targeting different devices and systems.

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6 Shader techniques

Shader techniques are methods and approaches that use shaders to achieve specific visual effects and styles in games. They can combine different types of shaders, use different algorithms and formulas, and apply different parameters and settings. Some examples of shader techniques are cel shading, toon shading, outline shading, bloom, motion blur, depth of field, ambient occlusion, and HDR. Shader techniques can vary in complexity and difficulty, and require a good understanding of the mathematics and logic behind them.

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7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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What are some of the common shader types and techniques in game development?

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1 Vertex shaders

2 Pixel shaders

3 Geometry shaders

4 Compute shaders

5 Shader models

6 Shader techniques

7 Here’s what else to consider

Game Programming

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