Cg Programming/Unity/Smooth Specular Highlights
This tutorial covers per-pixel lighting (also known as Phong shading).
It is based on Section “Specular Highlights”. If you haven't read that tutorial yet, you should read it first.
The main disadvantage of per-vertex lighting (i.e. of computing the surface lighting for each vertex and then interpolating the vertex colors) is the limited quality, in particular for specular highlights as demonstrated by the figure to the left. The remedy is per-pixel lighting which computes the lighting for each fragment based on an interpolated normal vector. While the resulting image quality is considerably higher, the performance costs are also significant.
Per-Pixel Lighting (Phong Shading)
editPer-pixel lighting is also known as Phong shading (in contrast to per-vertex lighting, which is also known as Gouraud shading). This should not be confused with the Phong reflection model (also called Phong lighting), which computes the surface lighting by an ambient, a diffuse, and a specular term as discussed in Section “Specular Highlights”.
The key idea of per-pixel lighting is easy to understand: normal vectors and positions are interpolated for each fragment and the lighting is computed in the fragment shader.
Shader Code
editApart from optimizations, implementing per-pixel lighting based on shader code for per-vertex lighting is straightforward: the lighting computation is moved from the vertex shader to the fragment shader and the vertex shader has to write the vertex input parameters required for the lighting computation to the vertex output parameters. The fragment shader then uses these parameters to compute the lighting. That's about it.
In this tutorial, we adapt the shader code from Section “Specular Highlights” to per-pixel lighting. The result looks like this:
Shader "Cg per-pixel lighting" {
Properties {
_Color ("Diffuse Material Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
_SpecColor ("Specular Material Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1)
_Shininess ("Shininess", Float) = 10
}
SubShader {
Pass {
Tags { "LightMode" = "ForwardBase" }
// pass for ambient light and first light source
CGPROGRAM
#pragma vertex vert
#pragma fragment frag
#include "UnityCG.cginc"
uniform float4 _LightColor0;
// color of light source (from "Lighting.cginc")
// User-specified properties
uniform float4 _Color;
uniform float4 _SpecColor;
uniform float _Shininess;
struct vertexInput {
float4 vertex : POSITION;
float3 normal : NORMAL;
};
struct vertexOutput {
float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
float4 posWorld : TEXCOORD0;
float3 normalDir : TEXCOORD1;
};
vertexOutput vert(vertexInput input)
{
vertexOutput output;
float4x4 modelMatrix = unity_ObjectToWorld;
float4x4 modelMatrixInverse = unity_WorldToObject;
output.posWorld = mul(modelMatrix, input.vertex);
output.normalDir = normalize(
mul(float4(input.normal, 0.0), modelMatrixInverse).xyz);
output.pos = UnityObjectToClipPos(input.vertex);
return output;
}
float4 frag(vertexOutput input) : COLOR
{
float3 normalDirection = normalize(input.normalDir);
float3 viewDirection = normalize(
_WorldSpaceCameraPos - input.posWorld.xyz);
float3 lightDirection;
float attenuation;
if (0.0 == _WorldSpaceLightPos0.w) // directional light?
{
attenuation = 1.0; // no attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(_WorldSpaceLightPos0.xyz);
}
else // point or spot light
{
float3 vertexToLightSource =
_WorldSpaceLightPos0.xyz - input.posWorld.xyz;
float distance = length(vertexToLightSource);
attenuation = 1.0 / distance; // linear attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(vertexToLightSource);
}
float3 ambientLighting =
UNITY_LIGHTMODEL_AMBIENT.rgb * _Color.rgb;
float3 diffuseReflection =
attenuation * _LightColor0.rgb * _Color.rgb
* max(0.0, dot(normalDirection, lightDirection));
float3 specularReflection;
if (dot(normalDirection, lightDirection) < 0.0)
// light source on the wrong side?
{
specularReflection = float3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
// no specular reflection
}
else // light source on the right side
{
specularReflection = attenuation * _LightColor0.rgb
* _SpecColor.rgb * pow(max(0.0, dot(
reflect(-lightDirection, normalDirection),
viewDirection)), _Shininess);
}
return float4(ambientLighting + diffuseReflection
+ specularReflection, 1.0);
}
ENDCG
}
Pass {
Tags { "LightMode" = "ForwardAdd" }
// pass for additional light sources
Blend One One // additive blending
CGPROGRAM
#pragma vertex vert
#pragma fragment frag
#include "UnityCG.cginc"
uniform float4 _LightColor0;
// color of light source (from "Lighting.cginc")
// User-specified properties
uniform float4 _Color;
uniform float4 _SpecColor;
uniform float _Shininess;
struct vertexInput {
float4 vertex : POSITION;
float3 normal : NORMAL;
};
struct vertexOutput {
float4 pos : SV_POSITION;
float4 posWorld : TEXCOORD0;
float3 normalDir : TEXCOORD1;
};
vertexOutput vert(vertexInput input)
{
vertexOutput output;
float4x4 modelMatrix = unity_ObjectToWorld;
float4x4 modelMatrixInverse = unity_WorldToObject;
output.posWorld = mul(modelMatrix, input.vertex);
output.normalDir = normalize(
mul(float4(input.normal, 0.0), modelMatrixInverse).xyz);
output.pos = UnityObjectToClipPos(input.vertex);
return output;
}
float4 frag(vertexOutput input) : COLOR
{
float3 normalDirection = normalize(input.normalDir);
float3 viewDirection = normalize(
_WorldSpaceCameraPos - input.posWorld.xyz);
float3 lightDirection;
float attenuation;
if (0.0 == _WorldSpaceLightPos0.w) // directional light?
{
attenuation = 1.0; // no attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(_WorldSpaceLightPos0.xyz);
}
else // point or spot light
{
float3 vertexToLightSource =
_WorldSpaceLightPos0.xyz - input.posWorld.xyz;
float distance = length(vertexToLightSource);
attenuation = 1.0 / distance; // linear attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(vertexToLightSource);
}
float3 diffuseReflection =
attenuation * _LightColor0.rgb * _Color.rgb
* max(0.0, dot(normalDirection, lightDirection));
float3 specularReflection;
if (dot(normalDirection, lightDirection) < 0.0)
// light source on the wrong side?
{
specularReflection = float3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
// no specular reflection
}
else // light source on the right side
{
specularReflection = attenuation * _LightColor0.rgb
* _SpecColor.rgb * pow(max(0.0, dot(
reflect(-lightDirection, normalDirection),
viewDirection)), _Shininess);
}
return float4(diffuseReflection
+ specularReflection, 1.0);
// no ambient lighting in this pass
}
ENDCG
}
}
Fallback "Specular"
}
Note that the vertex shader writes a normalized vector to output.normalDir in order to make sure that all directions are weighted equally in the interpolation. The fragment shader normalizes it again because the interpolated directions are no longer normalized.
Summary
editCongratulations, now you know how per-pixel Phong lighting works. We have seen:
- Why the quality provided by per-vertex lighting is sometimes insufficient (in particular because of specular highlights).
- How per-pixel lighting works and how to implement it based on a shader for per-vertex lighting.
Further reading
editIf you still want to know more
- about the shader version for per-vertex lighting, you should read Section “Specular Highlights”.