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Incredible Recreation of Half-Life 2's Citadel Core in Godot

The author has explained the working process behind the shader.

Don't you just love it when a new artist appears out of nowhere and launches their portfolio with a bang? If so, you'll want to see this incredible recreation of the Citadel Core from Half-Life 2 by Digital Artist known as izzyus, marking the very first project the internet has seen from this creator.

In addition to showcasing the shader itself, the prodigy has also shared the working process behind it, explaining that the effect is achieved in three phases and depends heavily on the exact texture Valve used in the original shader.

In the first phase, the texture's UVs are adjusted along the X-axis using a Fresnel effect to create a circular pattern, while the Y-axis drives the "pulse" effect using a Sin operation controlled by Time. During the second phase, the output is distorted with a Normal Map whose UVs are animated via a Flow Map texture. In the third and final phase, the result is multiplied by a screen texture that's distorted slightly to produce a subtle "glass" effect.

"Unfortunately Godot doesn't have a built-in Flow Map, so that has to be done manually," izzyus notes. "A side note, at the Flow Map stage, I cheated a bit, and used Triplanar mapping. I am not entirely sure how Valve mapped it in the original, but that was the only way that I could map the Flow Map onto the sphere without it looking weird. All the textures used were the original from the game."

We highly encourage you to follow izzyus on Reddit so as not to miss any of their new works. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on InstagramTwitterLinkedInTelegramTikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

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