Journey light up shader

Unity 3D -- C#

▚ Project summary:

In this project I wanted to re-create the Journey light up effect!  

As one of my favorite games, Journey amazed me with the style and the way it plays.

So I wanted to re-create the light up effect on the cloth of the main character.

I knew I had to write a special shader to get the effect on the cloth.

update written around 2022: This was made when Unity did not have a in built visual shader editor. 

▌Specifications:

Released: May 2018
Project type: Personal project
Platform: PC, Windows
Time spent on project: 1 week
Engine and Tools: Unity - C#

▌My contributions:

○ full character modeling
○ Cloth light up shader in HLSL
○ Learning and setting up the scene lighting and post processing

▌Project goals:

○ Learn more about HLSL and how to use this shader language in Unity, without any experience.
○ Practice my modeling and create a usable journey character.
○ Learn more about lighting and post processing. 
○ Implement a partial, texture defined light up shader.

Project Github Link

▚ Details:

The first texture was the base layer, with all the colors. The second and third texture were the layers that would light up. these layer are able to light up from any color! There are 2 separate light-up layers, because the scarf of the traveler always light's up. The third layer light strength can be adjusted!


After the shader was working correctly, I wanted to be able to decide the light pattern of the journey character. In the original game there are 21 Glowing Symbols you can collect. after collecting 5 or 6, your light pattern get's another row.

▚ Closing thoughts:


With this in mind, I wrote some small scripts and I really liked the final product! I can change the light intensity and the light pattern! learned a lot while working on this project, especially a lot about shaders!

Project Github Link