Archive - GM Shaders

An overview of the mix function, how it works and some unusual uses

Aug 30 •

Volumetric Raymarching

Rendering clouds, fire, smoke, light rays and more with raymarching

Aug 23 •

July 2025

Decoding: Phosphor

How I created "Phosphor", with glowing, fluid particles, in just 258 chars

Jul 26 •

Efficient Chaos

Techniques I use for fast pseudo-randomness in pixel shaders

Jul 10 •

June 2025

Modeling the World in 280 Characters

An exploration of the mindset, methods, and motivations behind crafting tiny, expressive shaders that combine code, art, and constraint

Jun 23 •

May 2025

Functions: Tanh

An introduction to the hyperbolic tangent function and how to use it

May 31 •

Mini: Design Choices

The guidelines I use to visually improve my shader art

May 19 •

April 2025

Common Shader Mistakes

Avoiding the most common problems in graphics programming

Apr 26 •

Combining Shaders

How and when to combine shaders into a single shader pass.

Apr 19 •

Reading Math Papers

An overview of mathematics for programmers

Apr 10 •

March 2025

Approximating fluid dynamics and flames efficiently with shaders

Mar 17 •

February 2025

Signed Distance Fields

How SDFs work in shaders and how to write your own

Feb 19 •

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