Kenny Lammers - Unity shaders and effects cookbook

Kenny Lammers has been working in the games industry for 13 years now. He has worked for companies such as Microsoft, Activision, and the late Surreal Software. He currently runs two companies; the first is Creative TD, where he does Unity3D consulting / asset creation for companies such as IGT, Microsoft, Janus Research, and Allegorithmic, and the second company he owns and operates, with his business partner Noah Kaarbo, is Ozone Interactive. Ozone specializes in creating interactive applications and high-quality design with a focus on Untiy3D, for companies such as Amazon, E-line Media, Microsoft, and Sucker Punch games. His games industry experience has given him the opportunity to create characters using Zbrush and Maya, to write real-time Shaders and post effects, and to program full games in Unity3D using C#. He is currently working on a few games and developing toolsets within Unity to expedite the game creation process.

There are so many people I would like to thank, that it would take up a whole chapter by itself. First and foremost I would definitely like to thank my mom, for always telling me to keep working toward my dreams and always being there for me! I would like to thank my business partner Noah Kaarbo, for supporting me throughout the writing of this book and being my friend. I want to thank all the people I have worked with in the past, but most importantly I want to thank the few individuals who always urged me to push my skill sets even further and opened new worlds of the industry to me. These people are Ben Cammerano (MGS), Paul Amer (MGS), Fillipo Costanzo (5D Institute), Alessandro Tento (Lakshya), James Rogers (MGS), and Tony Garcia (Unity Technologies). I wouldn't be where I am today without any of these people, and they have my utmost respect!

Vincent Lim is a graduate from The One Academy with a Diploma in Digital Animation and Game Development. He joined Big Ant Studio immediately after graduation, where he was sculpted into a game developer. Spending a couple of years with them, Vincent has learned much, from low poly modeling to tiling textures to terrain sculpting, a little bit of programming and MEL scripting. With the variety of tasks he encountered during his active employment with Big Ant Studio, Vincent has equipped himself with knowledge about the game engine, how certain Shaders work, and the workflow pipeline. He was given several opportunities to construct or restructure certain pipelines for better efficiency. His MEL scripting skills were fostered through practical implementations within the pipeline. This enabled him to create the tools artist could use to speed up the process and shorten the gap to get a 3D model from a base mesh to in-game. With these experiences from Big Ant Studios, Vincent has been broadening his knowledge by learning new software and reading up about game mechanics and game engines. This has allowed him to discover Unity, and he has been experimenting with it as he strives to make his learning curves sky rocket.

Christian 'XeviaN' Meneghini is the young owner and enthusiast of Sinclair ZX Spectrum. He started to snoop the game development world with hardcoded sprites in basic and assembly languages. Years passed by and he worked with great technologies such as C64, the glorious Amiga, and all the PC's family processors, using all the video cards from Hercules and CGA from the first 3D accelerators to the actual ones. He felt an addiction to real-time rendering and demo scene, while specializing in graphics programing and performance optimization. Christian also composes music in his spare time.

After years of night-hour works with friends and colleagues, studying tech books, writing engines, and working for third-party companies, Christian founded a small studio in 2011, along with his friends Marco Di Timoteo and Luca Marchetti, and called it STUDIO EVIL. The first product of STUDIO EVIL was Syder Arcade, an old-style retro Shoot 'em up with actual 3D graphics for PC and Mac platforms, subsequently ported to iOS, Android, and OUYA platforms.

I'd like to thank all of my Italian game-developer friends for their commitment in growing the game development industry in our country.