Free HLSL Shader Tutorial Videos

Several years ago I made a series of training videos to teach artists how to write real-time shaders in HLSL. The series starts out with very simple concepts so that someone with no programming experience at all can start right from the beginning and learn to write shaders. Further into the series, I cover more advanced topics such as parallax mapping, global illumination, refleciton and refraction, and vertex animation. Everything is explained step by step so it’s easy to follow.

Originally, the videos shipped on 3 DVDs that sold for $60 each. Sales were pretty successful, but the company that sold them went out of business just a short time after the 3rd DVD was released. So I’ve decided to upload them to YouTube so that everyone can watch them for free! My hope is that they’ll help aspiring artists and programmers learn the art of shader creation. Although some of the material is out of date, almost all of the principles taught are still valuable to learn and understand as a foundation to learning to write shaders.

Here’s my channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/bcloward

The series consists of 40 videos. I’ll be releasing a new video each weekday starting this week - so if you’re interested, be sure to subscribe to the channel and check back often. If I get enough interest, my plan is to start creating new videos that demonstrate more recent shader techniques.

Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your feedback!

-Ben

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Wow! Thank you so much Ben!!
Really appreciate it!

Looking forward to see more stuff from you!

Thanks!

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wow this is awesome, thank you Ben!

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Oh wow! thank you very much for sharing Ben :smiley:

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Thank you for sharing.
Thank you Ben.

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Thanks for the sharing. It’s wonderful!

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Thanks for sharing these. Those CG academy Videos are gold, (Yours and others ) and so darn hard to find.

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Wow! You are the man!
HLSL shader tutorial is what I want for a long time!
Thank you for sharing!

All of the videos from the first DVD have now been released. The videos from the second DVD - which focuses on lighting and lighting models started coming out this week. You can watch them here:

A new one will be released each weekday.

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I own these already :slight_smile:

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Got these when they were released.
@Mambo4 is right. CG academy videos were pure gold.

Mostly use Unity shaders nowadays but this will be a great refresher
Cheers
b

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Ok - all of the videos from the second DVD are now available. Starting this week, the videos from the third DVD are starting to become available. This DVD covers the topic of surface shading including offset mapping, reflection, refraction, fresnel term, detail normal mapping, vertex animation, etc. You can watch them here:

If I get enough subscribers, my current plan is to begin to create new tutorial videos going over the process of creating shaders for the Unreal Engine once the DVD series is completed. So if you like learning about shaders, be sure to subscribe!