Chapter 03. What is next

Section 01: Blurred image effect

Section 02: Final thoughts

As I said at the very beginning of the book: shaders are a completely different approach to drawing graphics compared to the traditional brush-on-canvas model. We don’t have a canvas or a brush. At any given moment, all we have is the pixel coordinate, maybe a few other inputs, and we answer a simple question: what color should this exact pixel be?

It’s an exciting concept, but the learning curve is definitely steeper. With this book, I didn’t aim to teach you everything or cover every cool shader trick. My goal was to open the door to this wonderful concept.

The world is changing, and so are the expectations around UI. When you have one more tool in your toolbox, you stand out from those who don’t. You’ll start to see places where shaders can be used - sometimes in ways you wouldn’t expect.

I believe the industry will keep moving toward techniques like this - effects that are hard or even impossible to achieve efficiently without shaders. But even if I’m wrong, working with shaders is a great mental workout. It helps you see the familiar from a new angle. I hope I managed to get you interested.

This is my first book,  and I want to say a huge thank you for holding it, reading it, maybe even buying it in a store. Thank you, and I hope we’ll meet again. You can follow my shader experiments or check out what I’m working on next via Twitter or my Telegram channel.

Good luck with your creative work. See you around.

Alex Volkov.