Essential 2D Lit Shaders – Shader Graph Assets

NOTE: For ease of use, all shaders are created in a way that allows the user to control the effects using a single exposed float value (a controller value) from outside scripts. This also means the shaders are time-insensitive, but requires manual setup if a looping effect is desired. The scripts contained in the package demonstrate how both looping and non-looping effects can be dynamically controlled by the package's user.

1. Fullscreen Pulse Effect/Fullscreen Shader

A fullscreen pulse-wave effect with customizable center point (i.e. pulse origin on the screen), speed, colour and wave edge thickness. There is an additional (optional) distortion effect, whose strength is also fully customizable. Finally, if desired by the user, a second controller value can be used to smoothly fade out/fade in the screen during the pulse.

This asset can also be used as a stepping stone for creating your own fullscreen shader effects in Shader Graph (a script allowing custom renderer features and a fully set up URP Forward Renderer Asset – both necessary for fullscreen shaders – are provided in the pack).

A PDF document providing step-by-step instructions on how to set up this shader is provided in the pack.

2. Dual Emission Shader

A reconstructed URP Lit shader that supports dual emission, allowing you to have two different emission maps with two different emission colours and intensities. Additonally, a "extra intensity" controller is added to each of the emissions, enabling you to indefinitely increase each emission's strength, whereas the regular HDR colour input only allows intensities between -10 and +10.

3. Directional Dissolve Shader

This lit shader allows you to create a surface dissolve effect (e.g. for dying enemies) that moves in a predefined direction instead of simultaneously dissolving everywhere on the surface. The direction is defined by a black-white gradient texture (easily made with Photoshop's Gradient tool, or other image editing programs). 4 such gradient "noise" textures – horizontal, vertical, irregular and circular gradient – are included in the pack.

Additionally, the dissolve effect has fully customizable thickness, emission and speed.

4. Vertex Displacement Shader

A lit vertex-manipulation shader that creates irregular vibrations and distortions on the object's surface. The effect's strength is fully customizable.

5. Image Highlight Shader

This shader allows you to highlight images (originally intended for text that is written outside of Unity and then exported as an image) by gradually moving an emissive wave along their surface. The wave's emission, sharpness (strength), thickness and speed are fully customizable.

6. Lava Shader

A lit lava shader with customizable emission, movement speed and distortion. The shader uses a texture, allowing you to customize the effect for any liquid. A sample lava texture (including height/displacement, normal and specular/metallic maps), as well as a set up 2D sprite shape profile for the lava (NOTE: 2D Sprite Shape package is required, it can be imported from the Package Manager), are provided in the pack.

BONUS: The Shader Graph Subgraph asset included in this pack is a reconstructed URP standard lit shader. As such, it can be imported into your custom Shader Graph shaders, allowing you to both create custom shader effects and keep the standard shader options such as normal maps, emission, etc.

NOTE: This package contains 2 Unity versions.

In case you are using URP's Universal Renderer (default renderer when creating a project using the URP 3D Template), download the Universal Renderer version of the asset (Unity version 2020.2.2f1).

If you are using URP's 2D Renderer (default renderer when creating a project using the URP 2D Template), download the 2D Renderer version of the asset (Unity version 2021.2.0f1).