GLSL 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 attributes required for the lighting computation to varyings. The fragment shader then uses these varyings to compute the lighting (instead of the attributes that the vertex shader used). 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 "GLSL 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
GLSLPROGRAM
// User-specified properties
uniform vec4 _Color;
uniform vec4 _SpecColor;
uniform float _Shininess;
// The following built-in uniforms (except _LightColor0)
// are also defined in "UnityCG.glslinc",
// i.e. one could #include "UnityCG.glslinc"
uniform vec3 _WorldSpaceCameraPos;
// camera position in world space
uniform mat4 _Object2World; // model matrix
uniform mat4 _World2Object; // inverse model matrix
uniform vec4 _WorldSpaceLightPos0;
// direction to or position of light source
uniform vec4 _LightColor0;
// color of light source (from "Lighting.cginc")
varying vec4 position;
// position of the vertex in world space
varying vec3 varyingNormalDirection;
// surface normal vector in world space
#ifdef VERTEX
void main()
{
mat4 modelMatrix = _Object2World;
mat4 modelMatrixInverse = _World2Object; // unity_Scale.w
// is unnecessary because we normalize vectors
position = modelMatrix * gl_Vertex;
varyingNormalDirection = normalize(vec3(
vec4(gl_Normal, 0.0) * modelMatrixInverse));
gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;
}
#endif
#ifdef FRAGMENT
void main()
{
vec3 normalDirection = normalize(varyingNormalDirection);
vec3 viewDirection =
normalize(_WorldSpaceCameraPos - vec3(position));
vec3 lightDirection;
float attenuation;
if (0.0 == _WorldSpaceLightPos0.w) // directional light?
{
attenuation = 1.0; // no attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(vec3(_WorldSpaceLightPos0));
}
else // point or spot light
{
vec3 vertexToLightSource =
vec3(_WorldSpaceLightPos0 - position);
float distance = length(vertexToLightSource);
attenuation = 1.0 / distance; // linear attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(vertexToLightSource);
}
vec3 ambientLighting =
vec3(gl_LightModel.ambient) * vec3(_Color);
vec3 diffuseReflection =
attenuation * vec3(_LightColor0) * vec3(_Color)
* max(0.0, dot(normalDirection, lightDirection));
vec3 specularReflection;
if (dot(normalDirection, lightDirection) < 0.0)
// light source on the wrong side?
{
specularReflection = vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
// no specular reflection
}
else // light source on the right side
{
specularReflection = attenuation * vec3(_LightColor0)
* vec3(_SpecColor) * pow(max(0.0, dot(
reflect(-lightDirection, normalDirection),
viewDirection)), _Shininess);
}
gl_FragColor = vec4(ambientLighting + diffuseReflection
+ specularReflection, 1.0);
}
#endif
ENDGLSL
}
Pass {
Tags { "LightMode" = "ForwardAdd" }
// pass for additional light sources
Blend One One // additive blending
GLSLPROGRAM
// User-specified properties
uniform vec4 _Color;
uniform vec4 _SpecColor;
uniform float _Shininess;
// The following built-in uniforms (except _LightColor0)
// are also defined in "UnityCG.glslinc",
// i.e. one could #include "UnityCG.glslinc"
uniform vec3 _WorldSpaceCameraPos;
// camera position in world space
uniform mat4 _Object2World; // model matrix
uniform mat4 _World2Object; // inverse model matrix
uniform vec4 _WorldSpaceLightPos0;
// direction to or position of light source
uniform vec4 _LightColor0;
// color of light source (from "Lighting.cginc")
varying vec4 position;
// position of the vertex in world space
varying vec3 varyingNormalDirection;
// surface normal vector in world space
#ifdef VERTEX
void main()
{
mat4 modelMatrix = _Object2World;
mat4 modelMatrixInverse = _World2Object; // unity_Scale.w
// is unnecessary because we normalize vectors
position = modelMatrix * gl_Vertex;
varyingNormalDirection = normalize(vec3(
vec4(gl_Normal, 0.0) * modelMatrixInverse));
gl_Position = gl_ModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex;
}
#endif
#ifdef FRAGMENT
void main()
{
vec3 normalDirection = normalize(varyingNormalDirection);
vec3 viewDirection =
normalize(_WorldSpaceCameraPos - vec3(position));
vec3 lightDirection;
float attenuation;
if (0.0 == _WorldSpaceLightPos0.w) // directional light?
{
attenuation = 1.0; // no attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(vec3(_WorldSpaceLightPos0));
}
else // point or spot light
{
vec3 vertexToLightSource =
vec3(_WorldSpaceLightPos0 - position);
float distance = length(vertexToLightSource);
attenuation = 1.0 / distance; // linear attenuation
lightDirection = normalize(vertexToLightSource);
}
vec3 diffuseReflection =
attenuation * vec3(_LightColor0) * vec3(_Color)
* max(0.0, dot(normalDirection, lightDirection));
vec3 specularReflection;
if (dot(normalDirection, lightDirection) < 0.0)
// light source on the wrong side?
{
specularReflection = vec3(0.0, 0.0, 0.0);
// no specular reflection
}
else // light source on the right side
{
specularReflection = attenuation * vec3(_LightColor0)
* vec3(_SpecColor) * pow(max(0.0, dot(
reflect(-lightDirection, normalDirection),
viewDirection)), _Shininess);
}
gl_FragColor =
vec4(diffuseReflection + specularReflection, 1.0);
}
#endif
ENDGLSL
}
}
// The definition of a fallback shader should be commented out
// during development:
// Fallback "Specular"
}
Note that the vertex shader writes a normalized vector to varyingNormalDirection 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”.