Custom Shader Material

Extend Three.js standard materials with your own shaders!

These demos are real, you can click them! They contains full code, too. More demos here! 📦

Custom Shader Material (CSM) lets you extend Three.js' material library with your own Vertex and Fragment shaders. It Supports both Vanilla and React!

Show Vanilla example

import CustomShaderMaterial from "three-custom-shader-material/vanilla";

function Box() {
  const geometry = new THREE.BoxGeometry();
  const material = new CustomShaderMaterial({
    baseMaterial: THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial,
    vertexShader: /* glsl */ ` ... `, // Your vertex Shader
    fragmentShader: /* glsl */ ` ... `, // Your fragment Shader
    // Your Uniforms
    uniforms: {
      uTime: { value: 0 },
      ...
    },
    // Base material properties
    flatShading: true,
    color: 0xff00ff,
    ...
  });

  return new THREE.Mesh(geometry, material);
}

Show React example

import CustomShaderMaterial from 'three-custom-shader-material'

function Cube() {
  const materialRef = useRef()

  useFrame((state) => {
    if (materialRef.current) {
      materialRef.current.uniforms.uTime.value = state.clock.elapsedTime
    }
  })

  return (
    <mesh>
      <boxGeometry />
      <CustomShaderMaterial
        ref={materialRef}
        baseMaterial={THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial}
        vertexShader={/* glsl */ ` ... `} // Your vertex Shader
        fragmentShader={/* glsl */ ` ... `} // Your fragment Shader
        // Your Uniforms
        uniforms={{
          uTime: { value: 0 },
          ...
        }}
        // Base material properties
        flatShading
        color={0xff00ff}
        ...
      />
    </mesh>
  )
}

Show Vue (Tresjs) example

Moved to Cientos' Docs

Installation

npm install three-custom-shader-material
yarn add three-custom-shader-material

Output Variables

CSM provides the following output variables, all of them are optional but you MUST use these variables like you would use standard GLSL output variables to see results.

Variable	Type	Description	Available In	Notes
Vertex Shader	-	-	-	-
csm_Position	vec3	Custom vertex position.	Vertex Shader	csm_Position will be projected furthur down the line. Thus, no projection is needed here.
csm_PositionRaw	vec4	Direct equivalent of gl_Position.	Vertex Shader
csm_Normal	vec3	Custom vertex normals.	Vertex Shader
csm_PointSize	float	Direct equivalent of gl_PointSize.	Vertex Shader	Only available in PointsMaterial
Fragmet Shader	-	-	-	-
csm_DiffuseColor	vec4	Custom diffuse color.	Fragment Shader	Base material's shading will be applied to this color.
csm_FragColor	vec4	Direct equivalent of gl_FragColor.	Fragment Shader	csm_FragColor will override any shading applied by a base material. To preserve shading and other effects like roughness and metalness, use csm_DiffuseColor
csm_Roughness	float	Custom roughness.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with an roughnessMap.
csm_Metalness	float	Custom metalness.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with an metalnessMap.
csm_AO	float	Custom AO.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with an aoMap.
csm_Bump	vec3	Custom bump as perturbation to fragment normals.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a bumpMap.
csm_Clearcoat	float	Custom clearcoat factor.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a clearcoat.
csm_ClearcoatRoughness	float	Custom clearcoat roughenss factor.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a clearcoat.
csm_ClearcoatNormal	vec3	Custom clearcoat normal.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a clearcoat.
csm_Transmission	float	Custom transmission factor.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a transmission.
csm_Thickness	float	Custom transmission thickness.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a transmission.
csm_Iridescence	float	Custom iridescence factor.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a iridescence.
csm_Emissive	vec3	Custom emissive color.	Fragment Shader	Only available in materials with a emissive.
csm_FragNormal	float	Custom fragment normal.	Only available in materials with a normalMap.
Fragmet Shader (Special)	-	-	-	-
csm_DepthAlpha	float	Custom alpha for MeshDepthMaterial.	Fragment Shader	Useful for controlling customDepthMaterial with same shader as the shader material.
csm_UnlitFac	vec3	Custom mix between csm_DiffuseColor and csm_FragColor.	Fragment Shader	Can be used to mix lit and unlit materials. Set to 1.0 by default if csm_FragColor is found in shader string.

Typing

CSM infers prop types based on the baseMaterial prop. However, if this does not work for what ever reason, you can pass your base material type as a generic to CustomShaderMaterial<T>.

// Vanilla
const material = new CustomShaderMaterial<THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial>({
  baseMaterial: THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial,
  //...Any props
});

// React
<CustomShaderMaterial<THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial>
  baseMaterial={THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial}
  //...Any props

Custom overrides

You can define any custom overrides you'd like using the patchMap prop. The prop is used as shown below.

const material = new CustomShaderMaterial({
   baseMaterial: THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial,
   vertexShader: ` ... `,
   fragmentShader: ... `,
   uniforms: {...},
   patchMap={{
      "<KEYWORD>": {        // The keyword you will assign to in your custom shader
        "TO_REPLACE":       // The chunk you'd like to replace.
          "REPLACED_WITH"   // The chunk you'd like put in place of `TO_REPLACE`
      }
   }}
})

Note: If <KEYWORD> is not found in shader string, the patch map will not be applied. To ALWAYS apply a patch map, use the special keyword - * (star).

patchMap={{
  "*": { "TO_REPLACE": "REPLACED_WITH" }
}}

Extending already extended materials

CSM allows you to extend other CSM instances. Values set in the first shader will affect the next.

Note: Extending of other materials that use onBeforeCompile may or may not work depending on if the default #includes are mangled.

Show Vanilla example

import CustomShaderMaterial from "three-custom-shader-material/vanilla";

function Box() {
  const material1 = new CustomShaderMaterial({
    baseMaterial: THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial,
    //...Any props
  });
  const material2 = new CustomShaderMaterial({
    baseMaterial: material1,
    //...Any props
  });
}

Show React example

import CustomShaderMaterial from "three-custom-shader-material";
import CustomShaderMaterialImpl from "three-custom-shader-material/vanilla";

function Cube() {
  const [materialRef, setMaterialRef] = useState();

  return (
    <>
      <CustomShaderMaterial
        ref={setMaterialRef}
        baseMaterial={THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial}
        //...Any props
      />

      {materialRef && (
        <CustomShaderMaterial
          baseMaterial={materialRef}
          //...Any props
        />
      )}
    </>
  );
}

Gotchas

• csm_Position MUST be a non-projected vector. i.e., no need to multiply projectionMatrix or modelViewPosition with it. If you require projection, use csm_PositionRaw.

• Instancing must be handled manually when using csm_PositionRaw by multiplying in instanceMatrix into your projection math.

• When extending already extended material, variables, uniforms, attributes, varyings and functions are NOT scoped to the material they are defined in. Thus, you WILL get redefinition errors if you do not manually scope these identifiers.

• Extending of other materials that use onBeforeCompile may or may not work depending on if the default #includes are mangled.

• When using an instance of CSM as the baseMaterial, or chining multiple CSM instances, or when extending any material that uses onBeforeCompile the injection order is as follows:

  void main() {
    // shader A
    // shader B
    // shader C
    // shader D
  
    // original shader
  }

  Where A was the first in the chain.

• Cache key calculation takes into account base material's cache key. Useful for propagating changes across multiple chained CSM instances.

• If you find yourself lost in a patchMap, it's often simpler to just make a ShaderMaterial with the necessary #includes.

Performance

With v6, CSM's initialization cost is now negligible 🥳 Still, a couple important notes about performance:

• Changing these props will rebuild the material

  • baseMaterial
  • fragmentShader
  • vertexShader
  • uniforms
  • cacheKey

• CSM uses ThreeJS's default shader program caching system. Materials with the same cache key, will use the the same shader program.

• <meshPhysicalMaterial /> and <CSM baseMaterial={meshPhysicalMaterial}> are the same, and will use the same cached shader program. The default cache key is such:

  (cacheKey?.() || hash((vertexShader || "") + (fragmentShader || ""))) +
    baseMaterialCacheKey?.();

  You can provide your own cache key function via the cacheKey prop.

Note: CSM will only rebuild if the reference to the above props change, for example, in React, doing uniforms={{...}} means that the uniforms object is unstable, i.e. it is re-created, with a new reference every render. Instead, condsider memoizing the uniforms prop const uniforms = useMemo(() -> ({...}));. The uniforms object will then have the same refrence on every render.

If the uniforms are memoized, changing their value by doing uniforms.foo.value = ... will not cause CSM to rebuild, as the refrence of uniforms does not change.

License

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2024 Faraz Shaikh

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.