Fur shader for an unreleased digital pet mobile game

Using the idea of “shell fur” as a base, we needed fur on these cats to flow, to be different lengths in different areas, and to be thinner around the face and eyes. All of the cats in the game need to use the same shader, so I used textures similar to normal maps to affect the direction that the fur flows in.

To control the length and thickness of the fur uses another texture, with red and green channels. The shader interprets the values in those channels to fine tune areas of the fur.

This means we could take various models and use one shader, with one set of settings, and switch in and out the textures for the cat we want to use. And also, any colour pattern would also be interpreted correctly on every cat.