Introduction

Two powerful recent additions to Unity have been the Video Player component (and API), and the Shader Graph tool. Between them, they offer easier and more configurable ways to work with visual content in games. For example, they help with the loading and playing of videos on different visible objects, and provide a comprehensive way for non-shader programmers to construct sophisticated shader transformations using a visual graphing approach.

The big picture

The two core new Unity features discussed in this chapter are Shader Graphs and the Video Player. Each has its own section below.

The new Shader Graph tool

In 2018, Unity published details about the exciting new Shader Graph feature. Shader Graph is a tool that allows visual building of shaders, by creating and connecting inputs and output of nodes. Currently, it only works with the Lightweight Scriptable Render Pipeline, but should eventually work with many pipelines.

Unity's Scriptable Render Pipeline allow different, and customizable...