Free HLSL Shader Tutorial Videos

Resources & Knowledge
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Crossposting this, since it seems Ben Cloward… * shock * doesn’t have an account here at the moment.

Several years ago I made a series of training videos to teach artists how to write real-time shaders in HLSL. The series starts out with very simple concepts so that someone with no programming experience at all can start right from the beginning and learn to write shaders. Further into the series, I cover more advanced topics such as parallax mapping, global illumination, refleciton and refraction, and vertex animation. Everything is explained step by step so it’s easy to follow.

Originally, the videos shipped on 3 DVDs that sold for $60 each. Sales were pretty successful, but the company that sold them went out of business just a short time after the 3rd DVD was released. So I’ve decided to upload them to YouTube so that everyone can watch them for free! My hope is that they’ll help aspiring artists and programmers learn the art of shader creation. Although some of the material is out of date, almost all of the principles taught are still valuable to learn and understand as a foundation to learning to write shaders.

Here’s my channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/bcloward

The series consists of 40 videos. I’ll be releasing a new video each weekday starting this week - so if you’re interested, be sure to subscribe to the channel and check back often. If I get enough interest, my plan is to start creating new videos that demonstrate more recent shader techniques.

Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your feedback!

-Ben

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Ok - all of the videos from the second DVD are now available. Starting this week, the videos from the third DVD are starting to become available. This DVD covers the topic of surface shading including offset mapping, reflection, refraction, fresnel term, detail normal mapping, vertex animation, etc. You can watch them here:

If I get enough subscribers, my current plan is to begin to create new tutorial videos going over the process of creating shaders for the Unreal Engine once the DVD series is completed. So if you like learning about shaders, be sure to subscribe!

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