Kingdom Hearts' Paopu Fruit With Animated Crystal Unity Shader

Inspired by the iconic Paopu from Kingdom Hearts, a star-shaped fruit linked to the legend of intertwining destinies between those who share it, Technical Artist Mirza Beig, renowned for his stunning Unity shaders, teamed up with Hoon aka magic_chromatic to recreate a stylized version using their 3D model.

This is an entirely procedural, no textures, fully parametric, volumetric shader with Grease Pencil-like outlines, translucency for sub-surface lighting simulation, and GPU animations:

Have a look at some of the nodes behind this setup:

Mirza Beig worked on a similar project before, recreating Sailor Moon's Wand interactively in Unity with Hoon's 3D model as well. Two cameras rendered the original Blender model and then the full scene with custom surface, particle shaders, and post-processing for interactive cutaways/split screens:

Also, in case you missed it, recently Mirza Beig shared a tutorial on his latest "technically interesting" shader experiment along with free project files, so you can learn how to make a chromatic aberration distortion bubble shader, grab the files by clicking this link, and follow Mirza Beig on X/Twitter for more great tips:

We also encourage you to check out our recent interview with Mirza Beig, where the artist recalled his Unity journey and talked about his awesome projects:

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