Doggy Vision Shaders

During one of our two-week Rapid Prototype Rounds with the theme of "storytelling", the team I was part of created the game, Campward Bound: The Incredible Journey, the story of a lost dog trying to find their owner.

Since we were playing as the lost dog, I proposed we try and make it feel like the player is looking through the eyes of the dog.  This would not only add to the storytelling element, but also made the core mechanic a bit more challenging since you are seeing things like a dog would.

Below is a before and after of a test scene in Unity that I set up while building my effects:

Since dogs are nearsighted, I altered the depth of field, and the "smell-o-vision" is represented by a particle effect that is untouched by the post-processing shaders. The Depth of Field effect is also customizable in the inspector.

As dogs also have limited color vision, I wanted to find a way to mimic this effect with another post-processing shader placed on the camera that tinged all the values in the scene with a greenish hue.

Below you see the same test scene, with all the "Doggy Vision" shaders in action:

Shader inspiration comes from Catlike Coding.