Creating Custom Shaders in Flutter: A Step-by-Step Guide

This blog post discusses how to create custom shaders in Flutter using GLSL, a high-level shading language used to program the GPU to allow for custom visual effects and rendering.

What is GLSL?

GLSL is a high-level shading language that is used to program the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in a manner that allows for custom visual effects and rendering.

Let's Start

To create a shader we need to write code in GLSL. This blog post uses an existing GLSL code from Shadertoy and modifies it for use in a Flutter app.

Shadertoy

Shadertoy is a place where we have multiple shader code available we can pick and modify to run on flutter. For this blog post, we use this GLSL code: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ctSSDR

Flutter Implementation

1. Add the shader to Flutter pubspec.yaml under flutter.
2. Create a CustomPainter class that extends CustomPainter.
3. Create a Shader class that reads the shader from the file and passes variables to the CustomPainter class.

Final Words

This post provides a comprehensive guide for someone new to custom shaders in Flutter, and how to get started creating their own custom shaders. In the next post, we will cover the conversion of a complex shader which involves manipulation of an image from the user.