Tutorial: Creating a Lava Lamp Shader With Unity

Unity Technical Artist Josué Ortigoza, also known as Dervish, continues the series of insightful tutorials on creating appealing shaders in Unity with one more comprehensive guide.

The new tutorial shared by the artist explains a simple and cost-effective fluid simulation technique in Unity with the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) and Shader Graph and demonstrates how this technique can be used to set up a neat lava lamp shader. According to the creator, the same principle can also be applied to create other types of liquids, such as plasma, water, and more. Please note that the tutorial is in Spanish but has English captions available.

Earlier, Dervish also showcased a mesmerizing jellyfish animation, created to test out custom-made sine wave shaders, a Unity-made recreation of an iconic Moonlight Sword from Bloodborne, and a fantastic Pokemon-inspired diorama, made to test pixel art shaders. You can check out all of these projects and more by visiting the artist's Twitter page.

For those unaware, Unity Shader Graph is a user-friendly tool designed to construct shaders visually. Instead of manually writing code, it empowers you to create and interconnect nodes within a graphical framework.

This unique approach provides immediate feedback, allowing you to see real-time reflections of your modifications. Even for those unfamiliar with shader creation, Shader Graph offers a straightforward and accessible experience.

Here are some more of Dervish's awesome guides that explore the possibilities of Shader Graph:

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