Shades of Halftone – The Blog of Maxime Heckel Shades of Halftone Feb 10, 2026 Feb 10, 2026 There has recently been a newfound excitement for pattern-based post-processing effects all over my timeline, as softwares such as Paper , Efecto , or Unicorn Studio are democratizing the use of shaders for both designers and developers. While some of these patterns originated as workarounds due to technical limitations we have since overcome, they now serve as an artistic direction to create distinct designs with self-imposed constraints. One of those effects that kept coming back over and over again is halftone , the classic dot pattern, arranging dots of different sizes in a grid to give the optical illusion of a gradient of color to the observer. This technique was originally used to print images with limited ink colors, while today, it is more a versatile artistic tool used across media and the web to give some kind of texture or grain to digital outputs. I personally find this effect very interesting, as it is inherently simple to implement in its classic form, but can quickly branch off to some complex and intricate visuals. I’ve dedicated a lot of time over the past few months to trying the different flavors that halftone can take and overlaying them on top of static images, videos, or interactive 3D scenes as shaders. Simple dots on a grid , ink splatters , grids overlapping at an angle yielding some Moiré effects , blending colors in interesting ways , breaking the grid , etc. I even tried my hand at seeing how halftone could be animated in a fun yet meaningful way. Every single one of these variants had its own interesting implementation details/shading techniques and aesthetic that I felt were worth writing about and breaking down to make building and designing with halftone more approachable. Enjoying my writing and feeling like supporting my work? You can show your appreciation by buying me a coffee (I really really really do like coffee) which will give me the much-needed energy (and fuel my caffeine addiction) to take on more ambitious/high-quality articles and (probably over-engineered but fun) projects. As a token of gratitude, your name will be featured on this little screen below! MADE IN NYC – @MAXIMEHECKEL – 2025 – MADE IN NYC – @MAXIMEHECKEL – 2025 – MADE IN NYC – @MAXIMEHECKEL – 2025 – MADE IN NYC – @MAXIMEHECKEL – 2025 – Thank you for reading! Behind the Dot Pattern I explored several optical illusions and “trompe l’oeil” post-processing effects in Post-Processing Shaders as a Creative Medium that create the illusion of texture or material, like woven crochet or glass. Halftone is, funnily enough, not so different as it is inherently an optical illusion itself. The effect creates the impression of continuous/smooth tones, much like dithering, by providing a high-frequency grid of dots. Because these dots can be smaller than the eye’s spatial resolution , the brain ends up performing a spatial average of the pattern . Thus, past a c

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