GLSL Testbed

feanix

I'm taking the plunge from working with shaders in node based editors (like UDK's material editor) to writing code out by hand. It looks like I'm going to have to use GLSL because for various mysterious tech reasons (this is beyond my control).

Is there any rendered out there that will let me load in GLSL shaders and materials and see them being rendered while I learn?

gray

your in luck. this is basically what you want.

http://www.geeks3d.com/glslhacker/

http://glsl.heroku.com/

feanix

Brilliant, thanks!

Farfarer

Recently I've been using http://www.imgtec.com/powervr/insider/sdkdownloads/ PowerVR SDK for optimising GL ES2.0 shaders. Works with regular GLSL, too.

Lets you live-edit and gives you rough estimates on shader costs.

It's kinda fiddly but worth it if you're taking the shaders into a proper game rather than playing around. Especially on mobiles where graphics are costly.

feanix

Oooh, I will check it out! Shiny!

Eric Chadwick

Thanks for the links, added to the wiki.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryShaders#Tools

feanix

Wow, fiddly is right! GLSL Hacker takes some figuring out but a lot of it is common sense. PowerVR is just... incomprehensible! Freaking hell