GSL Distortion Toolkit

Modular URP distortion toolkit with Scalar, Vector, Procedural Sine and Radial distortion, plus reusable Sub Graphs and composition examples.

Render Pipeline: Universal Render Pipeline (URP)

Shader System: Unity Shader Graph

Developed and tested in: Unity 2022.3.62f3 LTS

Compatibility also tested in: Unity 6.6 (6000.6.1f1)

Included Shader Graph content:

• 4 reusable BYOS Distortion Sub Graphs

• 4 Ready To Use Shader Graphs

• 5 composition example Shader Graphs

Distortion mechanics and examples:

• Scalar Distortion

• Vector Distortion

• Procedural Sine Distortion

• Radial Distortion

• Offset Addition

• Offset Mask

• Morph

• Domain Warp

• Localized Warp

Materials:

• 4 Ready To Use Materials

• 5 composition example Materials

Additional content:

• Demonstration/test textures

• 1 technical Demo Scene

• GSL Distortion Toolkit User Guide

• GSL Shader Toolkit Library General Guide

Custom scripts: None

Asset Store package dependencies: None

Built-in Render Pipeline: Not supported

HDRP: Not supported

GSL Distortion Toolkit is a modular Unity URP Distortion Shader Toolkit for creating animated warping, surface distortion, localized deformation, procedural motion, and texture-driven distortion effects.

Use it to build heat-style distortion, energy and magical effects, unstable surfaces, animated warping, ripple-like deformation, stylized VFX, and other distortion-driven shader effects without being locked to a single predefined visual style.

The Toolkit includes both Ready To Use Shader Graphs and Materials for immediate results and reusable Shader Graph Sub Graphs for building custom Distortion effects.

Two complementary workflows are included:

Ready To Use

Prebuilt Shader Graphs and configured Materials provide ready-made Distortion effects that can be used immediately and customized through exposed parameters.

Build Your Own Shaders (BYOS)

Reusable Sub Graph blocks expose the fundamental Distortion mechanics for users who want to build custom shaders, integrate distortion into existing Shader Graphs, or combine multiple coordinate-processing operations.

Four Distortion mechanics:

Scalar Distortion

Uses a scalar texture field together with an independent Direction to control coordinate displacement. Suitable for directional warping, noise-driven motion, animated surface variation, and other field-based distortion effects.

Vector Distortion

Uses RG texture data as a two-dimensional displacement field, preserving local vector direction and magnitude for more complex directional warping.

Procedural Sine Distortion

Generates animated distortion mathematically without requiring an external distortion texture. Suitable for procedural waves, oscillating deformation, and animated surface motion.

Radial Distortion

Creates localized center-driven coordinate warping controlled by Center, Radius, and Strength. Suitable for pulse-style effects, localized impacts, energy fields, and circular deformation.

Ready To Use and composition examples

The included shaders and materials demonstrate each Distortion mechanic individually.

Additional examples demonstrate:

• Independent Offset addition

• Offset masking

• Morphing between Distortion fields

• Domain warping

• Localized radial warping

These examples show how the same Distortion mechanics can be layered, blended, localized, and combined to produce more complex visual results.

Built for customization and composition

Each BYOS Distortion block provides both CoordinatesOut and Offset outputs.

This allows Distortion behavior to be:

• Used directly

• Chained sequentially

• Combined through displacement

• Masked

• Blended

• Localized

• Reordered and repeated

• Integrated into compatible Shader Graph workflows

Texture-driven Distortion blocks also support independent field coordinates, allowing the distortion source and the coordinates being distorted to use separate coordinate domains.

The same Distortion building blocks can therefore be reused across many different materials, VFX styles, and shader workflows instead of being locked to a single predefined result.

GSL Distortion Toolkit is designed as part of the expanding GSL Shader Toolkit Library, where each Toolkit focuses on one fundamental shader mechanic that can be used independently or combined with other compatible Toolkit blocks.

No custom scripts are required.

Experiment. Combine. Create.

Developed in Unity 2022.3.62f3 LTS with URP and Shader Graph.

Compatibility has also been tested in Unity 6.6 (6000.6.1f1).