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Shaders for Beginners

Explore the illustrated effect guide: 28 individual effects and eight material/image-quality studies, with playable samples, original models, screenshots and practical game uses.

A shader is a small program used by the graphics card to decide how something is drawn. A material shader controls the pixels on a model: whether it looks shiny, unlit, metallic, cartoon-like, or partly dissolved. A post-processing shader changes the camera's finished picture, producing effects such as bloom, grayscale, or a vignette.

You do not need to write shader code to use shaders in Blitz3D. The built-in library covers many common effects, and the Standard material provides modern lighting through normal BlitzBasic commands.

1. Which option should I use?

Common modern tasks

To project window patterns, coloured images or caustics through a light, see Light cookies and the playable interior sample.

2. Loading your first built-in shader

Built-in shaders have names beginning with builtin:. They are packaged with Blitz3D, work in a standalone executable, and need no shader files beside your program.

shader=LoadShader("builtin:toon")
ShaderFloat shader,"Bands",4
EntityShader cube,shader

These three lines load the toon shader, set one of its named controls, and apply it to a model. That is enough to start. Parameter names are not case-sensitive, although copying the spelling from this guide makes code easier to read.

Built-in material shaders

The modern material set adds foliage, triplanar, parallax, hologram, wet-surface, snow, water, glass, and force-field. See the complete built-in catalogue for exact controls and costs.

EntityShader applies the appearance to every surface on one model. Pass zero to restore its normal brush or classic appearance:

EntityShader robot,shader
; Later...
EntityShader robot,0

Changing controls

Each control has a type. Use the matching command:

A misspelled name or wrong setter is reported as a runtime error. If this happens, check the control's spelling and type in the table or sample.

3. Built-in camera effects

Depth fog, AO, focus blur, outlines, LUT grading, sharpening, lens treatment, motion blur, screen-space reflections, volumetric fog, and light shafts are also packaged aliases. Their catalogue entries state the required inputs and intended stage.

A camera effect is loaded in the same way, but attached to a camera:

effect=LoadShader("builtin:vignette")
ShaderFloat effect,"Strength",.7
ShaderFloat effect,"Radius",.5
CameraEffect camera,effect

Material shaders go on entities or brushes; post effects go on cameras. 2D drawing performed after RenderWorld is not changed by a camera effect.

4. The built-in Standard material

The Standard material is the easiest way to give a brush modern, physically-based lighting. It is controlled directly through brush commands:

brush=CreateStandardBrush(220,140,60)
BrushPBR brush,0,.35
PaintEntity sphere,brush

The first BrushPBR value is metallic, from 0 to 1. Use 0 for paint, plastic, stone, wood, or skin, and 1 for bare metal. The second is roughness, also from 0 to 1. Low roughness gives sharp highlights; high roughness gives broad, soft highlights.

You can also turn an ordinary brush into a Standard material. Standard property commands attach it automatically:

brush=CreateBrush(190,60,35)
BrushStandard brush,True
BrushPBR brush,0,.55

BrushStandard brush,False returns the brush to classic rendering. Commands such as BrushColor, BrushAlpha, PaintEntity, and PaintSurface continue to work normally.

Adding texture maps

Each map command accepts an ordinary Blitz texture and optional animation frame. Pass texture zero to remove a map. Tangents needed by a normal map are generated automatically.

Transparency and two-sided surfaces

BrushAlphaMode selects opaque (0), hard cut-out or mask (1), or soft alpha blending (2). Use BrushDoubleSided for thin leaves, cloth, cards, and similar meshes; leave it off for normal closed objects.

Environment lighting and skyboxes

BrushEnvironmentMap adds ambient light and reflections from a normal 2:1 equirectangular image. CreateSkyBox displays the same kind of image behind the scene:

environment=LoadTexture("sunset.jpg",1+8+32)
sky=CreateSkyBox(environment)
SkyBoxIntensity sky,.8
BrushEnvironmentMap brush,environment,0,1.2

The sky and material lighting are independent. Imported glTF/GLB materials already use this same Standard material system.

Layered Standard materials

BrushClearcoat, BrushClearcoatNormalMap, BrushTransmission, BrushVolume, BrushSheen, BrushAnisotropy, and BrushIridescence add common glTF material layers. The importer maps the matching KHR_materials_* extensions automatically. Sample 15 compares every layer under one environment.

5. HDR and anti-aliasing

HDRRendering True
ToneMapMode 2
ToneMapExposure 0
AntiAliasMode 3 ; TAA

HDR is opt-in, keeps emission above white for scene-linear effects, and applies one output transform. Existing programs remain LDR. TAA keeps per-target history; 4x MSAA instead resolves colour and depth before post effects. Switching modes is safe.

6. Adding shaders gradually

There is no global shader switch. Leave the world, particles, UI meshes, and old media alone, then try a shader on one character, water brush, or camera. Everything else continues through its configured Standard or classic rendering path.

7. Cleanup

When an entity, brush, or camera receives a shader, it retains the attached instance. Calling FreeShader releases your script's handle but does not break the attached effect:

shader=LoadShader("builtin:toon")
EntityShader cube,shader
FreeShader shader

Free handles you keep when they are no longer needed, just as you would free textures and brushes.

8. Where to go next

Open the shader sample gallery for complete working examples. The Shader group in the command reference has smaller examples for individual commands.

Continue with Using Shaders: Intermediate to learn brushes, multiple effects, parameters, copies, lifetime, asset loading, and deployment. When you want to write HLSL, use the Advanced Shader Authoring Guide.

Built-in shaders · Standard materials · Extended mode