Lets see if this one is right for you!

What this class is:

• An overview of a fragment shader, how to create different color palettes, shapes and movement in shaders.
• A line by line walkthrough on coding a shader from scratch. Along with material and explanation on how to write more and expand from there beyond this workshop.
• A brief overview of what shaders are from a technical standpoint and what is the graphics pipeline.
• How to approach shader writing beyond changing numbers and seeing what they do, even though there is no shame in that approach!

What this class is not:

• An introduction to coding or creative coding.
• How to use shaders in specific platforms like Unity, Unreal, Three.js or shadertoy (though all the things you will learn you will be able to apply to those shaders with minimal syntactic changes. There just isn’t enough time to go over how to setup and use shaders in all those environments.)
• How to input and/or use images/video/audio in shaders
• An advanced workshop for graphics programmers. If youre pretty good at shading, i.e. you can code up shapes and movement without reference, this class might be not helpful for you.

Here is the link to sign up June 5th or July 17th 2021 at 12-2 PM EDT

If those times don’t work for you or the tickets are sold out- you may fill out this interest/waiting list form!

How to prepare for this workshop:

Be prepared to talk with people, this class is interactive, in that you can ask questions real-time;  you will be talking to your classmates and you will be encouraged to show your work.

For best experience, it’s recommend to have a second screen (or tablet) for the video streaming and keep your main for computer display for live coding and test your shader creations.

The environment you’ll code in is free and browser based, no time wasted in setup/installation. To be sure your setup will work follow these steps:

• Make sure your browser can run this page: https://shawnlawson.github.io/The_Force/
• If not, first switch to a browser that can support webGL: https://caniuse.com/#feat=webgl
• Then, follow instructions here to enable webGL for your browser.

Thats it! Once you’ve got the basics of shaders down, real-time rendering skills translate to many projects: livecoding performances, music visualizers, spicing up your unity/three.js/openframeworks/Processing/p5 projects, and more.

Student work from previous workshops

This video is me going through some of the shaders from the online student work exhibition! You can see it yourself here.