What's the *best practice* to handle image effects?

Unity Engine
1

I feel like I am missing a key concept and I thought I’d ask here.

If I have a game object and I want a special effect applied—let’s say I want it to begin to glow and being highlighted—what is the proper way to go about this?

My initial approach would be to write a custom shader and apply it to the object. But the problem is that it applies to the whole object. It is not the object with a glow. It is only the glow. So I’d have to create a sub-object so that I can apply the shader there. But that would require me to duplicate the material of the original object. Now, if I change the shader for that duplicate, it may work, if I get me z-order right. What if I want another effect applied on top of it all, say a blur? I would have to create yet another sub-object, and so on.

All of this seems awfully convoluted and complicated, leading me to believe that I am missing a key concept here. So, here’s my question? What would be the right way to go about something like this? How do you guys go about adding complex special effects to game objects?

2

I think you are going at it correctly, creating your own shader, then mask (or use some appropriate technique) so the object so the shader is not applied where you dont want it to be.