--- title: Compute Shaders in Unity, Step by Step | daily.dev description: A step-by-step walkthrough of building a GPU-driven crowd simulation in Unity using compute shaders. Covers writing a compute shader kernel with structured... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/compute-shaders-in-unity-step-by-step-hfb3srgpo twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Compute Shaders in Unity, Step by Step | daily.dev og:description: A step-by-step walkthrough of building a GPU-driven crowd simulation in Unity using compute shaders. Covers writing a compute shader kernel with structured... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/compute-shaders-in-unity-step-by-step-hfb3srgpo og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/hfB3sRgPO.png og:image:alt: Compute Shaders in Unity, Step by Step og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Compute Shaders in Unity, Step by Step **[git-amend](https://daily.dev/sources/git-amend)** · 14 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A step-by-step walkthrough of building a GPU-driven crowd simulation in Unity using compute shaders. Covers writing a compute shader kernel with structured buffers to update 10,000 agent positions in parallel, creating a matching URP shader for procedural instanced rendering, and wiring everything together from a C# MonoBehaviour. The tutorial progressively adds features: speed-based color visualization via lerp in the fragment shader, and a shared runtime target position so all agents converge on a moving point. Key concepts explained include thread groups and dispatch dimensions, SV_DispatchThreadID, struct memory layout alignment between C#/HLSL, Marshal.SizeOf for safe buffer sizing, and GPU buffer sharing between simulation and rendering passes. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Issue \#301- UI, C\#, Graphics Programming, and more](https://daily.dev/posts/issue-301--ui-c-graphics-programming-and-more-m9duw8hle) · Game Dev Digest · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#gpu](https://daily.dev/tags/gpu), [#unity](https://daily.dev/tags/unity) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/compute-shaders-in-unity-step-by-step-hfb3srgpo) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Compute Shaders in Unity, Step by Step","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/compute-shaders-in-unity-step-by-step-hfb3srgpo","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/compute-shaders-in-unity-step-by-step-hfb3srgpo"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T07:59:01.029Z","dateModified":"2026-07-19T09:46:29.227Z","description":"A step-by-step walkthrough of building a GPU-driven crowd simulation in Unity using compute shaders. 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