Procedural Animal Patterns

This project uses Unity Shader Graph to procedurally generate textures for use as animal patterns. The shader has a wide range of parameters to control the details of the texture's appearance. This, in turn, is paired with a script that controls groups of parameters, providing a layer of abstraction that also functions as an accurate representation of real-life animal genetics.

One core idea behind many of these patterns is the combination of a grayscale texture that defines the density or spread of certain patterns with noise, which then has an adjustable threshold applied to it to create the final pattern. The use of textures that can be predefined allows for creative control for artists, the threshold provides an intuitive way to adjust the appearance, and the noise creates variation at the edges of different shapes.

Another major piece of the functionality is using such grayscale textures to determine which of two textures to sample, or the proportion to blend them at, when looking at a particular point. Overall, my goal was to create a project that provides a flexible base for procedural texture generation.

View a live demo and the project repository below: