Prismatic Card Shader

Prismatic Card Shader

Inspired by the iconic card effects from Balatro, Prismatic Card Shader lets you create beautiful holographic, foil, prismatic, iridescent and rainbow-style materials with only a few clicks.

While originally designed for playing cards, the shader is equally suitable for tickets, labels, stickers, photos, trading cards, UI elements, and many other objects. With minor customization it can also be used to create realistic iridescent surfaces such as oil slicks, soap bubbles, water reflections, magical effects, and more.

The shader generates an animated grayscale mask (radial or linear sine wave), which can optionally be distorted with procedural noise. The mask is then blended with either a customizable color gradient texture or a solid color and finally combined with the base texture using multiple blend modes.

The standout feature of this shader is normal map support for the prismatic effect itself. Instead of applying the rainbow uniformly across the surface, the effect follows the object's surface details, producing a much more convincing and premium-looking result that is rarely found in similar shaders.

A custom ShaderGUI makes all parameters easy to understand and organize, allowing artists to quickly create unique materials without modifying the shader.

The package includes:

• 11 ready-to-use gradient textures
• 17 normal maps for holographic effects
• Demo scenes for both URP and HDRP
• PDF documentation with a quick start guide

The shader is highly modular. Individual features can be enabled or disabled using Unity Shader Keywords, so unused functionality is excluded from shader variants instead of remaining compiled.

If you have any questions, feedback, or feature suggestions, feel free to contact me at: egorsdalekihgor@gmail.com