Desert Oasis

Purpose - 

The purpose of this project is to is to learn the tools, techniques, and processes used in modern game development. This is specifically looking at graphics techniques from a more graphical perspective rather than an artistic one. Prior to the start of the project, I created a project plan (below) to follow weekly. My desire was to alleviate foreseen pain points for Covert Flyer, my largest game and project to date.

Project Plan -

• Lighting
  • Baked/Realtime
  • Sources (types of light, colors, etc.)
  • Shadows (hard, soft, etc.)
    • Directional Shadows
  • Global Illumination
• Particle Systems
  • Techniques
  • Trails
  • Explosions
  • Smokes
  • GPU Instancing
• Cameras
  • Occlusion Culling 
  • Dynamic resolution
  • Physical Cameras
  • Camera tricks
• Materials, Shaders, and Textures (Intro/Overview)
  • Textures
  • Creating, editing, and using materials
  • Particle Shaders
  • Manipulating the Unity standard shader
    • Content v Context
    • Metallic v Specular
    • Rendering Mode
    • Albedo Color and Transparency
    • Specular mode: Specular parameter
    • Metallic mode: Metallic Parameter
    • Smoothness
    • Normal maps (Bump mapping)
    • Heightmaps
    • Occlusion Maps
    • Emission
    • Secondary Maps (Detail Maps) & Detail Mask
    • The Fresnel Effect
• Materials, Shaders, and Textures Advanced
  • Writing own shaders (no longer editing standard shaders)
  • Cg/HLSL (enough to write a basic shader)
• Post-processing
  • Anti-aliasing
  • Ambient Occlusion
  • Bloom
  • Chromatic Aberration
  • Color Grading
  • Deferred Fog
  • Depth of Field
  • Auto Exposure
  • Grain
  • Motion Blur
  • Screen Space Reflection
  • Vignette
• Advanced Rendering Techniques
  • Rendering Paths
  • Level of Detail
  • Hugh Dynamic Range Rendering
  • Graphics command Buffers
  • Culling Groups
• Meshes
  • Creating, Editing, Manipulating Meshes
  • Mesh deformation
• Optimizing graphics
  • Draw call batching
  • Looking into the
    • Frame debugger
    • Rendering stats window
  • Texture streaming
  • Object Pools
  • LOD
• Rendering Pipeline, Path
  • Deferred shading rendering path
  • Foreword shading rendering path
  • Vertex Lit Rendering path
  • Deferred lighting rendering paths
  • URP (LWRP), HDRP
• Terrain Editor
  • Wind Zones
  • Speed Trees(s)
  • Grass
  • Water Shaders

Controls -

• Fly - WASD
• Look - Mouse
• Exit Demo - Escape