Simple Shader Demo
This post has a short demo showing how a custom shader can be implemented in R3F.
Learning Shaders with Interactive Controls
I am finding shaders to be quite intimidating to learn about. Here's a quick demo and some notes about shaders.
What It Shows
The shader demonstrates two core concepts:
Vertex displacement: Push vertices forward based on their UV coordinates. The uThresholdX
and uThresholdY
uniforms control where this happens.
Fragment coloring: Color pixels differently in the same UV region using the same threshold values.
Learning Through Interaction
Drag the displacement control to see .
The Leva controls expose the key parameters:
- Threshold values (where effects trigger)
- Displacement amount (how much vertices move)
- Colors (base and highlight)
- Material properties (wireframe, transparency)
Why This Helps
When you can immediately see how parameters affect the output, shader concepts click faster. You understand the relationship between UV coordinates and effects. You see how vertex and fragment shaders work together.
It's the difference between reading about shaders and actually playing with them.
Next Steps
Once you understand these basics, you can apply the same patterns to more complex effects. The interactive approach works for any shader - just expose the key parameters as uniforms and hook them up to controls.
Start simple, experiment freely, and build up your shader intuition.
Jeremy Atkinson
Jeremy is a structural engineer, researcher, and developer from BC. He works on Calcs.app and writes at Kinson.io