Compute shaders & GPU
Compute shaders let the GPU do general-purpose work: simulations, particles, culling, procedural meshes and image processing. These guides cover dispatching compute work, buffers, GPU instancing and indirect drawing. Worth learning once your CPU is the bottleneck for work that can run in parallel. 28 hand-picked Unity guides, tutorials, videos and repos, kept current.
- Moving two million soldiers in Unity with compute shaders and flow fields
How compute shaders and flow fields drive two million units at about 11 ms per frame.
jettelly.com · Sep 2026 - Making fire feel alive: Real-time fluid simulation in Ignitement
Real-time 2D fluid simulation used to create dynamic, gameplay-driven fire effects.
unity.com · Apr 2026 - Cairn technical art deep dive: Rendering gameplay-specific rock materials on top of level design
Using 3D blendmaps and compute shaders to keep climbable rock surfaces consistent between visuals and gameplay.
unity.com · Apr 2026 - Rendering at 500 km/h in Gear.Club Unlimited 3
Rendering tech behind a racing game: GPU-driven architecture, ray tracing and 60 fps at high speed.
unity.com · Mar 2026 - Bad Apple!! but it's a smoke simulationyoutube.com · Oct 2025
- Coding Adventure: Simulating Smokeyoutube.com · Oct 2025
- GPU Instanced Grass Breakdown
Breakdown of GPU instanced grass using Shader Graph with DrawMeshInstanced APIs.
cyanilux.com · Oct 2025 - Coding Adventure: Software Rasterizeryoutube.com · May 2025
- Coding Adventure: Planetary Fluid Simyoutube.com · Jan 2025
- Coding Adventure: Rendering Fluidsyoutube.com · Dec 2024
- GitHub - GarrettGunnell/Water: Sum of sines and fft fluid simulation with a physically based water shader
Repo: sum-of-sines and FFT water simulation with a physically based shader.
github.com · Jun 2023 - GitHub - AJTech2002/Smoothed-Particle-Hydrodynamics
Repo: smoothed-particle hydrodynamics fluid simulation in Unity.
github.com · Apr 2023 - My take on shaders: Compute shaders – Harry Alisavakis
Tutorial introducing compute shaders.
halisavakis.com · ~Oct 2022 - Interactive Volumetric Fog with Fluid Dynamics
Breaks down real-time interactive volumetric fog using fluid simulation and compute shaders in Unity.
shahriyarshahrabi.medium.com · ~Oct 2021 - Gentle Introduction to Fluid Simulation
Intuitive explanation of fluid simulation aimed at programmers and technical artists.
shahriyarshahrabi.medium.com · ~Oct 2021 - Lexdev: Frostpunk Heatmap Case Study
Case study using compute shaders and variants for a Frostpunk-style heatmap.
lexdev.net · ~Oct 2020 - Lexdev: Civilization Fog of War Case Study
Case study using a simple compute shader for Civilization VI fog of war.
lexdev.net · ~Jun 2020 - Unity Toy Path Tracer
Devlog on a toy path tracer built in Unity.
theinstructionlimit.com · Feb 2020 - Simple GPU Occlusion for Lens Flares
Describes a simple GPU-based occlusion method for lens flares in Summer Catchers.
dotsquid.com · Jun 2019 - GitHub - keijiro/StableFluids: A straightforward GPU implementation of Jos Stam's "Stable Fluids" on Unity.
Repo: GPU implementation of Jos Stam's Stable Fluids in Unity.
github.com · Jun 2018 - Daily Pathtracer Part 3: C# & Unity & Burst · Aras' website
Part three of a path tracer series, implemented in C# with Unity and Burst.
aras-p.info · Mar 2018 - GPU Sorting (Part 2)
Part two of GPU sorting with compute shaders, including source download.
alanzucconi.com · Dec 2017 - GPU Sorting (Part 1)
Introduces parallel sorting and a shader that sorts pixels on the GPU.
alanzucconi.com · Dec 2017 - How to Simulate Cellular Automata with Shaders
Simulates Conway's Game of Life with GPU shaders.
alanzucconi.com · Mar 2016 - How to Use Shaders for Simulations - Alan Zucconi
Series on using GPU shaders to run simulations.
alanzucconi.com · Mar 2016 - Actually Making Signed Distance Field Textures With JFA
Explains generating signed distance field textures with the jump flooding algorithm.
blog.demofox.org · Mar 2016 - Compute Shaders
Catlike Coding tutorial using a compute shader to display a million moving cubes.
catlikecoding.com - Coding Adventure: Marching Cubes
Video experimenting with the marching cubes algorithm for terrain meshes.
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