Render Monkey alternative ?

Froyok

Hello polycounters !

I'm currently working on an engine which is a bit low-level regarding the shaders. I must create them by hand but I'm not yet comfortable with hlsl and glsl, I was wondering if Render Monkey was still usable and not too much out of date ? Is there any alternative of it available ?

Eric Chadwick

Shader FX is a really nice system, although it only runs inside 3ds Max. But it really is the best GUI I've seen for shader editing, and it saves out HLSL, FX, cgFX, etc.

I put some other shader tool links here
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryShaders#Tools

Froyok

Nice ! Thanks for the links.
I use Maya unfortunately, but FX Composer looks nice !

Eric Chadwick

That IS unfortunate. I joke!

Froyok

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

That IS unfortunate. I joke!

Nobody is perfect, you use 3DS Max by example. :angel:

(If you are looking for me, I'm already out. )

haiddasalami

Yeah FXComposer is your best bet.

Bigjohn

Also unfortunate that ShaderFX is abandoned now and is no longer developed. You can't even download the trial anymore.

CrazyButcher

@Bigjohn it is not abandoned but as mentioned in another thread it was adopted by Autodesk and is developed on for full integration.

Bigjohn

Right, my bad, I meant that the standalone ShaderFX version we're used to is abandoned.

teatime

Froyok wrote: »

I use Maya unfortunately

Maya is a great solution for HLSL, GLSL, and CGFX shader editing.

Softimage and Blender are also great for realtime shader creation and previewing.

http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/chris/introduction-to-pixel-shaders-using-glsl

Use Rendermonkey to become familiar with the program structures and output if you like, but don't become dependent. There is a reason these node-based shader editors are not being developed, it's quicker to do it by hand and learn from example.

Also: http://eat3d.com/shaders_intro

Froyok

Thx for the inputs guys !