About Hyperreal

Hyperreal is a set of photorealistic environment shaders for Godot 4.7+. Every surface in it lights the same way, so subsurface, light wrap and sheen behave identically on terrain, on water and on cards — a look you establish once carries across the whole scene.

Design principles

Cheap by default. Every effect is built for the Mobile renderer first, not retrofitted to it. Turning a feature off costs nothing rather than a little.

Authorable, not procedural. Terrain materials are property blocks you tune by hand, not noise stacks you fight. Water is driven by textures you can replace with your own.

One lighting model. Terrain, water and cards all light the same way, so a look you establish on one carries to the others.

Real inspector controls. Everything is exposed as named, ranged, grouped properties — no magic numbers buried in shader code.

One lighting model

Writing a custom lighting function in Godot means giving up the engine’s lighting entirely — and then spending a week trying to match it by eye. Objects shaded by your shader sit next to objects shaded by Godot’s, and they never quite belong to the same scene.

Hyperreal’s lighting starts from exact parity with Godot’s own lighting — same diffuse, same specular, same energy at every angle and roughness — so its materials belong in the scene from the first frame. Then it adds what photorealistic surfaces need and Godot doesn’t offer: subsurface scattering, light wrap, sheen and per-fragment specularity.

It also closes a gap in Godot’s own specular energy handling, which relies on data a user shader can’t reach. Hand-written Godot lighting is usually slightly dimmer than the built-in path at grazing angles and high roughness — which is why custom shaders so often look subtly off even when the maths is right. Hyperreal materials keep their intended brightness at every angle.

Open by design

Every shader ships readable and editable. Nothing is obfuscated, and nothing phones home.