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Snow, ice, sand & lava

Surfaces that react to the player: footprints in snow, accumulating frost, flowing sand and glowing lava. These guides use render textures, height deformation and tessellation to make the ground respond. Fun to build and visually rewarding. 12 hand-picked Unity guides, tutorials, videos and repos, kept current.

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• Snow and Icicles Shader Graph

  Patreon post building snow and icicles in Shader Graph.

  patreon.com · Dec 2024
• Snow and Icicles Tessellation Shader Graph

  Patreon post building snow and icicles with tessellation in Shader Graph.

  patreon.com · Dec 2024
• Voronoi-based Lava in Unity Shader Graph

  Builds animated lava in Shader Graph using custom Voronoi noise that exposes cell edges.

  danielilett.com · Jun 2023
• Sand Rendering in Journey (GDC, John Edwards)

  GDC talk on how Journey renders its sand.

  youtube.com · Nov 2022
• Journey Sand Shader: Glitter Reflection

  Part five of a series recreating Journey's glittering sand reflections.

  alanzucconi.com · Oct 2019
• Journey Sand Shader: Specular Reflection

  Part four of a series recreating Journey's sand specular reflections.

  alanzucconi.com · Oct 2019
• Journey Sand Shader: Sand Normal

  Part three of a series on the normal mapping behind Journey's sand.

  alanzucconi.com · Oct 2019
• Journey Sand Shader: Diffuse Colour

  Part two of a series on the lighting model and diffuse color of Journey's sand.

  alanzucconi.com · Oct 2019
• A Journey Into Journey’s Sand Shader

  Part one of a series recreating Journey's sand rendering.

  alanzucconi.com · Oct 2019
• Shader Showcase Saturday #6: Dynamic Snow

  Creates dynamic, realistic snow using shaders.

  alanzucconi.com · Aug 2018
• My take on shaders: Snow shader – Harry Alisavakis

  Simple snow shader tutorial.

  halisavakis.com · ~Jan 2018
• Shaders Case Study - Spelunky Ice Cave Crystals

  Case study recreating Spelunky's ice cave crystal look with shaders.

  youtube.com · Apr 2016