Alright, so I wanted to mess around with shaders in Starfield. I’ve dabbled in shader stuff before, but nothing too serious, you know? So, this was a bit of a learning curve, but a fun one!
Getting Started
First things first, I needed to get my hands dirty. I figured the best way was to just jump in and start experimenting. I didn’t really have a solid plan, more like a “let’s see what happens” kind of approach.
i Found a few basic shader tutorials online,not specific for starfield, just general shader principles. Understanding the very basics of how shaders worked helped,stuff like vertex and fragment shaders and what not.
The Messy Middle
Experimentation:
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Started by trying to modify existing shaders, just simple tweaks to colors and textures at first.
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Then tried to combine parts of different shaders, copy-pasting bits of code to see what would stick, this got messy real quick. A lot of trail and error at this stage
My Tools:
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I just used some text editors at first, just to look at shader code.
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Then,i start use some code editor,easy to read and write.
Making (Some) Sense of It
After a while, I started to get a feel for how things were structured. I realized that a lot of the visual effects I wanted relied on playing with textures and how light interacts with them. It was a lot of trial and error, tweaking values, seeing what happened, and then tweaking them some more.
My ‘Aha!’ Moment
I wouldn’t say I had a single “eureka!” moment, but more like a gradual understanding. I started to see how different parts of the shader code controlled different aspects of the visuals. Like, “Oh, this part is what’s making that glow effect!” or “Okay, that parameter controls the shininess.” It was like slowly piecing together a puzzle.
Still a Long Way to Go…
Honestly, I’ve barely scratched the surface. I managed to make a few cool (at least to me!) visual tweaks, but I’m still a long way from being a shader expert. It’s definitely something I want to keep exploring, though. It’s pretty rewarding when you finally manage to get the effect you were going for, even if it’s something small.
So yeah, that’s my shader journey in Starfield so far. Very much a work in progress, but a fun one!
