earthworks shaders | Hard Surface Shaders

earthworks - shaders

Cubemap convolution

A highly optimized compute shader for real-time cubemap convolution, designed to outperform traditional solutions in both speed and quality.

Compared to Unity’s built-in implementation, this shader delivers significantly faster performance and superior visual fidelity—making it ideal for dynamic environments, real-time lighting updates, and reflection-heavy scenes.

JHFAA - Johan Hammes Fresnel Anti-Aliasing

JHFAA is a comprehensive solution for eliminating aliasing artifacts caused by physically invalid surface normals—an often overlooked source of visual noise in real-time rendering.

Unlike traditional antialiasing techniques that attempt to blur away these issues after the fact, JHFAA addresses the root cause by correcting normals before reflections are calculated. It then applies Fresnel reflections accurately along object edges, producing a cleaner, crisper image that often eliminates the need for post-process antialiasing entirely.

This makes JHFAA particularly well-suited for power users and VR enthusiasts—especially those using high-resolution headsets like the Pimax—where disabling traditional antialiasing can lead to performance gains without sacrificing image quality.

Featured on: Threat Interactive
Implemented in: A custom fork of Unreal Engine for a commercial studio

Specular occlusion maps

In the same way that ambient occlusion blocks environment light in matt materials, specular occlusion blocks reflections in shiny materials.

Rather than sampling the hemisphere, this method reflects rays off the surface first, then samples how many rays escape. This creates the deep blacks that can be seen inside the grill in the image.

Multi-Layer materials

A physically based layering system that preserves and propagates core properties - such as base normals - through each layer.

Ideal for automotive materials, where coatings and base layers must behave consistently and interact realistically.

Specular aliasing solution

A hybrid solution using both baking tools and shader-level changes to eliminate specular aliasing, particularly at hard edges and panel gaps. Introduces the concept of anisotropic geometric roughness for a more physically accurate response across surfaces.

Clearcoat

The clearcoat shader incorporates total internal reflection to accurately calculate the amount of light reaching the paint underneath.

While it has a tiny effect on darker cars, on light or white cars the effect is pronounced and much more realistic.