Vertex displacement & animation
Moving vertices in the shader lets you animate meshes for free on the GPU: waving grass, flags, wobbling jelly, melting and morphing. This section explains displacement, vertex colours as animation masks and how to keep normals and shadows correct after the mesh has moved. 26 hand-picked Unity guides, tutorials, videos and repos, kept current.
- Shooting holes through walls in Unity with ManifoldCSG
How each shot cuts a hole through a wall mesh at runtime using ManifoldCSG.
jettelly.com · Oct 2026 - Spooky particles: vertex color animated mesh particles (tutorial)
Tutorial post with files for animating mesh particles using vertex colors, updated with axis fixes.
minionsart.github.io · Oct 2026 - Dark Roll 2: soft pillow mesh deformation script in Unity
How a mesh deformation script for a soft landing pillow was reused for the game's sludge.
jettelly.com · Oct 2026 - Blood magic VFX: Houdini fluid sim baked to VAT (ArtStation)
Fluid simulation from Houdini baked into vertex animation textures to run in real time.
artstation.com · Jul 2026 - Vertex Flowmap Painter
Patreon post on a tool for painting vertex-color flowmaps used in vertex displacement.
patreon.com · Jun 2026 - Unity Shader Code Basics 05 - Vertex Shaders & Tessellation
Moves vertices in a vertex shader for waves and adds tessellation for low-poly meshes.
danielilett.com · Jan 2026 - Patreon: Animated Mesh
Patreon post on animated mesh effects in Unity.
patreon.com · ~Oct 2025 - Adding Tessellation into URP Shader Graph
Patreon post on adding tessellation to URP Shader Graph.
patreon.com · May 2025 - Unity Shader Graph Basics (Part 5 - Vertex Shaders)
Modifies mesh vertices in Shader Graph to create wave displacement effects.
danielilett.com · Feb 2024 - Vertex Animated Water - Advanced Materials - Episode 36
Creates vertex-animated water in an advanced materials series.
youtube.com · ~Jan 2024 - Book page turn: vertex shader + flipbook node in Shader Graph
Post showing a book page turn using a vertex shader and flipbook node in Shader Graph.
mastodon.gamedev.place · Jul 2023 - The Four Vertex Volume
Explains a four-vertex volume rendering trick.
simonschreibt.de · Apr 2023 - Fractured Cube Breakdown
Breaks down a fractured cube shader displacing prefractured pieces using pivots baked into UVs.
cyanilux.com · Mar 2023 - Tornado Shader Breakdown
Breakdown of a tornado shader using scrolling alpha-clipped noise layers with vertex displacement.
cyanilux.com · ~Jan 2022 - Texture Animation Techniques
Explains baking animations into textures for vertex-shader playback (Vertex Animation Textures).
medium.com · ~Sep 2020 - Vertex / Fragment Shader | Unity Tuutorial
Explains vertex and fragment shaders in Unity.
youtube.com · Feb 2020 - My take on shaders: Butterflies and fish shader – Harry Alisavakis
Builds an unlit butterflies and fish shader.
halisavakis.com · ~Nov 2018 - Shader Showcase Saturday #10: Fortnite Procedural Animations
Recreates Fortnite-style procedural animation effects with shaders.
alanzucconi.com · Sep 2018 - Shader Showcase Saturday #7: Billboard Impostors
Uses billboard impostors to reduce polygon counts in Unity.
alanzucconi.com · Aug 2018 - Vertex Displacement
Displaces vertices in the vertex shader for wobble effects.
ronja-tutorials.com · Jun 2018 - Tessellation
Catlike Coding tutorial on triangle tessellation with hull and domain shaders.
catlikecoding.com · Nov 2017 - waterfall - William Chyr
Blog posts about adding a splash to a waterfall using a sine-wave vertex shader.
williamchyr.com · ~May 2017 - Bending Solid Geometry in Planetary Annihilation
Internship story on bending solid geometry in Planetary Annihilation.
allenchou.net · Jul 2013 - Warcraft 3 – Billboards
Looks at how Warcraft 3 uses billboards in an asset and why it works well.
simonschreibt.de · Jan 2013 - Chapter 7. Rendering Countless Blades of Waving Grass
GPU Gems chapter on rendering vast fields of waving grass blades.
developer.nvidia.com - Book (w/ Turnable Pages) Breakdown
Breakdown of a book whose pages turn via vertex displacement and select texture regions.
cyanilux.com