An introduction to Shader Art Coding 

This is probably the best shader introduction in RU-vid. It's very informative and it's also less than 30 minutes.

So you drop this absolute banger of a first youtube video and go dark for months at a time? What a madlad

This is the most productive 22:30 minutes of my life. I wish every tutorial could explain such difficult concepts in such an engaging way.

Wow. _WOW_ I'm blown away by this tutorial. I can't BELIEVE how well this is made, and how well you explained this subject. Even as a coder (as a hobby), shader coding has always been this gigantic terrifying unknowable thing, and half an hour later it feels so down to earth and doable. Here's a like, Here's a sub, here's a comment. More shader content _please_ !

This video is a masterpiece. It should be everyone's first stop when learning shader code.

God tier tutorial, absolutely unreal that this is the first video on your channel. This is where production quality and planning goes from being a comfort to being a legitimate pull for new people to the subject you’re covering. Mega cheers dude.

Are you a friggin wizard genius savant? Because until today I had absolutely zero understanding of this art and only ever appreciated it. Today I can write it. And its entirely due to your 20min video. I'm beyond amazed. Further, the most perfect metering, speech, explanations, volume, calmness, and even lofi background music. The production value and quality of this video is 10x what I've seen or learned from in life. I never comment.

You don't need a graphics card to run shaders, just a GPU. This is such a good tutorial, seriously next level. By far the coolest coding tutorial I've ever seen, hands down.

I always wanted to take a deep dive into shaders but never took the time to do so. Thank you so much for providing such a brilliant introduction.

I thought the vocal track sounded just slightly disjointed, then I saw that you used AI to generate it. Very neat way to communicate when you're not totally comfortable with your own voice. Had you not said anything in the description, I'd probably think you were either uncomfortable recording voiceovers, or had hired someone to do it from fiverr. Very good video!

I’ve never thought of shaders being used artistically like this, just for games. Fascinating and illuminating to see maths meet art like this- the results speak for themselves.

This was such a great video. It definitely makes me wanna dive into it. I also love and appreciate the final statement as sometimes even with regular coding, we don't take the time to appreciate what we've built already because we're so focused on what it is we need to build. Love the content. Subscribed !

I have a bunch of experience making photorealistic pathtracing shaders but I've always lacked the reasoning for creative projects like these. This was super helpful thank you

What a fantastic production. You absolutely nailed that delivery. Thankyou!

This is such an unbelievably concise resource containing everything needed to get started, along with being so well presented. Massive props, thank you

This tutorial will probably be the go-to tutorial to anyone who wants a quick hands on introduction to shader code. I am a programmer but i wanted to learn shader coding. I started learning through this tutorial, because the end result looked amazing. You introduce hard but useful concepts in a digestable manner, and it inspired me to stop and think more than once so I could grasp the unfamiliar math formulas and usages. Every step teached me something and allowed a checkpoint to let the concepts sink in. I am not surprised you did not release a lot of videos (2 atm), probably because you put so much effort into the presentation. I thank you for your efforts and for the wonderful tutorial - Condensing years of experience into very insightful 22 minutes.

your first video's already a banger! the animations are brutally good, and the pacing and style of explaining are both top notch. bro please keep creating. can't to see what else is put out!

Thank you, this kind of shader art or math art tutorial is really cool! One small note: at 13:20 (and throughout the rest of the video) when you multiply the argument of sin() by 8 and divide the result by 8, you are multiplying and dividing different things. Multiplying the argument by 8 increases the frequency, which is what gives multiple rings. But dividing the result by 8 only has an effect on the amplitude of the resulting sine wave, which will oscillate between -0.125 and 0.125 instead of -1 and 1. So you might have just kept the oscillation between -1 and 1 and adjusted the argument to smoothstep(). Further on, at 15:05, in the same way you can remove the division by 8 and adjust the coefficient of the inverse function (0.16 instead of 0.02) The reasons for doing this would be 1. to avoid any confusion that the two 8 in sin(d*8.)/8. have any relation to each other (they don't, except for keeping the derivative close to ±1 when the sine wave crosses the x axis, which doesn't have much use in this case because you're inverting and scaling the resulting value anyways) and 2. to avoid division, which is still a costly operation in hardware, hence the fewer divisions you perform, the faster your code will be. Check out Quake III's famous Fast Inverse Square Root algorithm for an example of the effort programmers will do to avoid dividing numbers.

No, I _did not_ notice the voice was AI, only that it was polished and articulate. This is one of the most fascinating YT videos I've watched. All the more so because I only _barely_ understood most of it-but *did* understand some of it. I'm 75 years old and have no experience with coding except for a thorough understanding of HTML, and a basic knowledge of JS and CSS. My original background and training are in the fine visual arts-i.e., predigital age, hands-on drawing, and painting with RW physical materials. That said, I've lived in the SF Bay Area for most of my adult life, occasionally rubbing shoulders with more technically-minded peers. Even so, I had little interest in computer technology until the mid-to-late 1990s when the internet came along. Before that, from the mid-1980s, although I had played around a little with visuals on what were then high-end systems belonging to friends who were more into emerging digital arts, I couldn't take them seriously. In those days, the only way to show anyone a digital image was to put it on a floppy disk and boot it up on someone's system. OR-Alternatively-take a 35mm film SLR photograph of the image on the highest resolution monitor available, then have the film processed and a print made from the film. - IOW, the way I saw it, there was no way to share the digital image produced with a mass audience _in the medium in which it had been created._ The internet changed all that as it was now possible to share digital images globally. Thus it was only then that I began to take digital imaging more seriously as an art form. It still remained more of a 'novelty' to me than something I regarded as a 'genuine' art. Along the way, I bought my first Apple/Mac system, began learning Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and discovered I had an aptitude for HTML (that was a big surprise). This was in the days when we wrote it by hand in MS Word, saving it in a .text format-then opening the .html in a browser. This led to a grasp of hexadecimal color values, and, later the addition of CSS and a sufficient sprinkling of JS to (at least) be able to modify code someone else had written-to adapt an JS slideshow on a web page, for example. The small publishing company I worked for at the time (1996-98) was sufficiently impressed with my skills that they wanted to send me up to Seattle for further training. But I _refused_ this generous offer because, bottom line, _I was a fine arts painter who only worked a job to support his art (large, up to 8x10 feet, very visceral-action based- abstract paintings) and did _*_NOT_*_ want my attention to become absorbed by the non-physical digital realm of emerging AR, etc._ The way I thought about it at the time was, "The ability to a) modify a digital image with infinite iterations, and b) infinitely distribute reproductions of those iterations as visual impressions, reduced any inherent value of that image to absolute *_ZERO._* " I still feel that way today! LOL But, putting all philosophical questions regarding the "inherent value" of _any_ image aside, this initial tutorial is fascinating! I didn't understand a lot of it (math skills stagnated at high school level Algebra II-Trig seemed beyond my comprehension and was of no interest whatever) but I understood enough. I already understood that pixels are like cells in a spreadsheet, and that image editing apps were performing mathematical operations on those cells -but now I FINALLY have a glimmer of understanding of what a _vector_ (as in vectors drawn in Illustrator) _*is*._ If I were 15 or even 25 and not 75 years old I'd probably be all over this, flinging my time and attention into fine-tuned digital image generation at the coding level! But as it is-I think I've had quite enough of this world already. I'll leave it to you youngsters to wander off into the virtual realm, and over the cliff of infinite iterations, of the emerging all-mighty (oxymoronic) AI. All I'll add is, "GOOD LUCK" - you're gonna need it!

This is honestly one of the best tutorials i've come across. Period. Amazing view into a topic i was only mildly familiar with and broke it down in very approachable and informative ways. The illustrations showing everything as code was updated really blew me away! Great work.

Simply superb! Can't believe this is your first video. The way you illustrated by tweaking the same few lines of code into beatiful art is just mesmerizing and very inspiring. Twenty minutes well spent.

What an absolutely incredible tutorial. I've ALWAYS struggled with learning shaders, having tried on several occasions, and the quality of this tutorial alone puts others to shame. If this is an indication of the level of clear, concise, and effective communication one can expect from this channel, then you've got a new subscriber. Cheers, and thank you so much!

This tutorial was phenomenal. No setup required, everything is free and you can follow along in real time. I have not looked into your supplemental websites but seeing those tools for graphing and calculating the color palettes has really inspired me to look into this more. For a little history of myself, I have been fascinated with what I called "fractal art" as well as "visualizers" that came most music players at the time, but I had no idea you could replicate one with a few lines of code and half an hour of your time this easily! Thank you for inspiring me when I have grown bored of coding tutorials, game design feels too complex, and "app" design sounds so boring that it's basically just modern day web design in a container. But this? This is art, math, and science mixed into one easily accessible package!

I hope you keep making tuts like this one. Very well explained and showed.

The combination of code and math resulting in such beautiful visuals is wonderful

The best intro to shaders I’ve seen. Informative without being overwhelming, while still allowing a newcomer to dip into the “good stuff” right away, which creates a self-motivating loop to learn more! Thank you! 🎉

The fact that my eyes were glued to the screen from start to finish and I immediately checked your channel for more videos… instant sub. Can’t wait to try this out and I can’t wait for more!

Thank you for making this video! This is the kind of shader tutorial I had always wished existed. I feel confident for the first time that I can start playing around with shaders and graphics programming.

This tutorial/video is so clean, my standards gone up like f(x)=x^2. On a serious note, even if the video is packed towards the end, it is still explained cleanly, pausing/replaying and thinking about it works, great work

This has to be one of the best beginning of an awesome youtube channel. We as devs strive for finding such awe-inspiring piece of information. Please, keep the videos like this coming to flawed palette of RU-vid home screen. Nice video.

Unbeliavable that this is a first video, insane quality and content. Keep up with this masterpieces!

Your introduction was the missing link for my curiosity about shaders. I feel capable of exploring and applying the technique of shader programming! Thanks so much and I'm very much looking forward to what comes next

Fantastic introduction! I’ve been wanting to take a dive into glsl and you did a amazing job explaining everything!

OMG!!! This is literally one of the best coding tutorial for a shader with in-depth explanation paired with the visual changes which makes it way easier to understand and grasp the concept. And now this tutorial has peaked my interest in OpenGL shaders.

My first experience with shaders was when I tried to implement the Half Lambertian diffuse shading model in Unity (this was 2023, not 2006, by the way) and I found out how fun shaders were. Thanks for making it easier for me and other people to learn more about this technology!

This is incredible, thank you for putting this intro together and for sharing some useful websites. Looking forward to what you make next!!

Lovely video, I've been coding shaders for a couple years now and this is a fantastic introduction to this topic! Will definitely be sharing this with friends that are interested in this topic.

My man, you are a god sent ! As a GameMaker dev, I strugled so much to find any bits of clear info about 2d shaders. I was proud of what i could achieve so far but you certainly blew my slight windows of opportunity into a vast horizon. Thank you !

I first found out about your art through Instagram. I thought it was amazing that you placed the code alongside your art. Then I see your art on the Shadertoy feature/home page, only to be recommended this video on RU-vid. I'm glad I came across you and your page and I commend you on your hard work. Not only on shading but creating this video. As someone who is vaguely familiar with code, this ties it really nicely together. We really need more introductory videos! So thank you for contributing to this great outlet.

You have done huge job on this! Using voiceover was totally cool with me on this video, calm temp helped me to follow the explanations. Visuals, animations, the way you explain how you twist the code and how you introduce new ideas to expand the creative idea is brilliant. You made making shaders looks simple and very creative, which is a really hard job. You are a good teacher. All the applauses. 👏👏👏👏

I really enjoyed your video! I've been teaching math, physics, and computer science in high schools for over 40 years. I've always been very interested in math art, and this is perfect! I'll be using your video with my computer science students starting next month. Thank you!

I'm entirely mindblown, shader programming is something really different than what one is used to. This video shows with great detail the steps to getting a piece of art done, and it looks like magic. Very exciting a concept to introduce to many artists, and even explore yourself as a challenge.

This wrapped my head around so many things I kept seeing while studying shadertoy code. Top tier video!

Realizing this is the first tutorial on this channel blew my mind. High production levels and I can't wait for more

Man, that's a LOT to take in. Thank you so much for the tutorial and useful links! A little bit of this, a little bit of trial and error, and we'll see where it leads :)

wow, what a wonderful video... Going from complete basics to a unique and beautiful animation in such a short time! Showcasing so many creative uses for simple functions. A great video from start to finish!

Oh my gosh. I came across your shaders on Shader Toy just the other day and now I see you’re making tutorials 🤩! Thank you so much for sharing your intellect with us in such a wonderfully comprehensive manner❣️

I know I'm echoing what others have already said, but it bears repeating: This is the best introduction to frag shaders I've ever watched or read. This is such a great resource and the links to the other resources you've drawn from are invaluable.

At this point I don't even mind AI voice overs anymore, the level which it is at combined with a creator making a great script like here, it channel clarity about a subject someone may already have into a way people can consume it more easily. Great tutorial.

As a first video, it was made on an absolutely wonderful level. This inspires me a lot. Also, utilisation of AI technologies is a nice trick) Looking forward to seeing more of your work

Everything about this makes my brain happy. Everything from the approachable, well organized way of presenting the material, to the the color schemes and graphic choices. Even the AI voice and bg music is thoughtfully chosen.

That was superb. I’ve been wanting to get in to shader coding for a few years and this is so clear and helpful! Your animations of the explanations as well are smooth and very well done.

What an impressively edited and high quality video you've made! Waiting for more :=)

This video is awesome! Shaders always sounded like some incomprehensible concept to me, but this video allowed me to think that perhaps I would be able to make cool effects for my own too :)

That's probably the best tutorial I have ever seen. Informative, captivating, short, clear and visually stunning. Bravo !

I've never wanted for a part 2 so much in my life.

Incredible tutorial ! The video editing with sources / code is perfect the AI voice is nice too

Really nice, I love these types of introduction videos! Will you do a similar one for 3d as well?

wow, absolutely astonishing. I've messed around with GL shaders very briefly before, but this motivates me to dive deeper and create something unique and interesting of my own! thank you for providing so many great resources, and walking us through a neat example of your process step by step. I saved this video for future reference because it's truly a masterpiece. bravo!!

I did learn about shaders during my engineer courses, but it was only a small part of those courses and it focused only about the technical behaviour and not showing any graphical results, seeing this, with a graphical output gives a really good view and makes it crystal clear to learn, thank you !

If you ever have the time could you do a deep dive of ShaderED? Especially going from Vertex to Pixel shader, I think that would be go a long way to get more people involved with graphics programming and shaders. I found when learning on my own in a Game Engine It was a challenge to piece together both realms of graphics programming and learning how debug shader render passes.

I wonder what software you use to generate the voiceover, it sounds so natural.

I always had a bit of difficulty wrapping my head around shaders and therefore just avoided them or looked for code. This really helped me getting started and you explained it so clear. I hope you will release more videos, if not, thanks for this one!

Great video thanks. More of these please! There's not enough shader tutorials on RU-vid. Don't worry about using AI for the speech, not everyone has a great presentation voice, as long as it doesn't sound too robotic I think it's fine. What is the name of the AI you're using?

Holy hell, I didn't realize the entire video was AI voice generated, My mind is blown. Amazing work on this video 👏👏

An exceptional intro to shader programming. It has really clarified my thinking about frag shaders. Please keep up the awesome work!

I've been wanting to learn how to make stuff like this for a while and finally decided to try. This was my first stop on learning this stuff, and I'm so glad it was. I appreciate all the helpful stuff you linked and that shadertoy site is so nice.

this is a great starting point for complete beginners, I'll be sharing this! and I like that you still end up with a pretty shader, that's something I struggle with in quick lessons. the ai voiceover is pretty good quality but I'd still recommend getting a decent usb mic (yeti or cheaper is fine, you don't need to go xlr), human voice is more engaging and personal. and the accent might even help

'Note that the voice-over has been generated using AI !' I'm quite curious which AI Voice generator did you use? The voice sounds quite realistic and pleasing.

thank you very much for this intro, i've been coding for 15+ years and this was very digestible

Really neat intro to shaders, not a big fan of the AI voice though.

you gave me hope for understanding shader and giving me confidence to develop a game, there are lots of shader tutorial out there you demonstated how it can be easily done with visuals to guide us viewers what is currently happening in the graph. You totally nailed this one out, Thank you, Subbed

This is phenomenal. Thanks for putting this out and especially for all of the provided resources in the description.

I'm not usually one for tutorials, because they're long and drawn out. You somehow managed to keep my attention to the point I didn't even notice 22 minutes had passed. Now, I really want to look more into this and making art out of it.

Hey, just wanted to let you know that I've been working up the motivation to start learning shader programming for well over two years now. Today I finally got off my ass, learned how to use Xcode, followed your example on my laptop, and coded up the same shader art in Metal. I'm so proud of myself and am eagerly awaiting another video. Thanks!

This is utterly insane. Powerfully pedagogic and inspiring your video, hope this brings many new artists to the scene!

By far the best shader learning resource I've found. Thanks so much for making this! Please keep making new videos

this was extremely easy to follow (for context: experienced programmer, shader newbie) and awe inspiring, exciting, beautiful... i can't wait to see more from you

I've been wanting to play with coding for art for some time, just didn't know where to start with the limited time I have free. This tutorial has that "winamp visuals plugin vibe" which is an aesthetic I actually what I want to play with, and eventually hook up to active datasets and an AI platform with input/output visualisation (think interactive visual exhibitions that react to what the audience are doing/the data tells it to do...). So, thanks to this very informative and intelligent video! At 17 minutes in I realised that I already have enough basic coding knowledge for a solid (2d) start; which is probably also testament as to how well and far coding visuals has come along. I hope you find another topic to cover soon, keep up this already high standard!

Amazing. No really, amazing! The end effect is mesmerizing and I love that you made all the concepts involved in getting there so clear to grasp. Well done!

Thank you so much for this. Please consider creating more of this or creating a course. The explanations in this one video were unbelievably well explained, and I was able to see the code without another monitor on zoom.

stunning tutorial. Im blown away. The breakdown of the different steps and visualizing the graphs of the different functions helped a lot

Absolutely beautiful reminds me of a shroom trip getting more intense over time, I’m so glad I found your tutorials they are amazing thank you so much!!❤️

Wow, this was a perfect introductory video. It sparks curiosity and confidence, and starting our own experiments doesn't seem daunting at all. Absolutely perfect video.

Likely the single best tutorial I have ever seen, well done and thanks!

I love video's like this because they offer insights which can be transferred towards other programs and in this case, their shading groups.

Kishimisu thank you so much for making this tutorial. Very inspirational and the way you teach from the creative perspective make that is very good to follow along. Looking forward to watch a new one from you! You are very creative visually and super skilled at the same time technically!

this is a great tutorial, hope this becomes a series, easy to follow along and learning loads

Excellent tutorial, Shows an amazing result, explains how to get there from start to finish, and done so in concise fashion. Perfect.

Thank you for this incredible tutorial! I've played around with shaders before but this gave me a way to approach it creatively instead of fearing it.

Fantastic tutorial. - Well paced - Visualizing the changes in every step maintains interest and keeps the watcher in sync - Oh and the colors, lots of colors! Please create more!

This video cleared up many doubts I had about how to approach the process of programming shaders.

I have been manifesting this video to pop into my life for years now. A short, pragmatic way to use code for creating gorgeous visual content. It’s everything i ever wished for. Also great job on the video quality, its superb! And no, i did not think it was an ai voice :)

With only 1 video and you have blown me away and now I want to learn how to code shader arts. Plz make more vids on this pplz!!!!

Unreal video - succinctly explaining functions with clear visual output really helped me gain a greater understanding of how they work. I'm so impressed with this, thanks for creating it!

This was absolutely phenomenal, I really hope you continue making videos because this is wonderful content.

This is a very clear tutorial, the best shader tutorial and in general very clear and gives me a lot of information! Please continue!

I've been looking for something exactly like this for 2 years. I have almost no experience in coding, but thanks to your video, will give it a go!

never tought that i needed to learn this until watch this video, please continue making more of it

This was amazingly well explained. Thank you for making it. You are a teacher of the future, Mr kishimishu.