Gem shader with faux refraction and sheen. Procedural piece motion also coded by me.
The parallax stars in the background are a single texture rendered to a simple quad that is locked to the camera. The illusion of depth is created by adding multiple samples of the texture together based on world coordinates.
The city lights are stored in the alpha layer of the planet texture, with a color setting in the shader. They are multiplied by the inverse of the lighting model, so that they do not appear in lit areas.
The atmosphere uses the angle of view to fade the texture towards the center, and edges. Minimizing how much it obscures the planet, and creating a fuzzy edge.
A diagram of how one of my more useful UI shaders has been structured.
At the top we see the source art (plus the tiny ramp "MAP" below the main texture.)
What this technique allows (in addition to the screen space sheen effect) is significant memory savings for multiple colors of UI components, without losing fidelity in highlights, or hue variation (best demonstrated in the middle example) as occurs with conventional color multiplication.
What this technique allows (in addition to the screen space sheen effect) is significant memory savings for multiple colors of UI components, without losing fidelity in highlights, or hue variation (best demonstrated in the middle example) as occurs with conventional color multiplication.
There are two general approaches to this technique. One is to use "single ramp" maps. The other demonstrated here is to use a hue selection map, to get use out of the V axis of the texture. Each have their own pros, and cons. In this example R is mapped to hue selection, G to brightness, and B to sheen intensity. Alpha is litteral.
This is similar tech to what is used in the Dragon Pearl Shader above. In that case the angle from the camera view is used to adjust the V axis of the ramp being used to color the scales, creating the pearl effect.
