Learning hlsl ( how to/ where to )

Mrfred

Hello,

I'm a technical animator that is currently looking to expend my skillset and I'd like to learn how to write shader in hlsl, but I don't really know where to start. I'm comfortable with scripting and coding so that part should be fine. But I do not know where to start, which engine should I use? I'm not really interested in learning xna just to test/learn shading unless I really have to

Is there any out of the box software with plug and play shader file that I can play with ?
Can you recommend a good website to start with(regarding to hlsl scripting tutorials) there seems to be so many I don't know which 1 to pick

DireWolf

I think this could be a good start https://digitalerr0r.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/xna-shader-programming-tutorial-1-ambient-light/

MS's site also has great resources. Filter by Game:Shader should give you quite a lot of look at.
http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/?contenttype=0&devarea=14&platform=0&sort=1

Mrfred

Cool thanks,
would you recommend using fx-composer for developping/testing shader?

lukors

I can recommend ShaderTool for actual shader creation. It has a node based interface to set up a pipeline to put stuff into your shader, and then you write actual HLSL/GLSL code, so that part is not node based.

It's available on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/314720/

Mrfred

Cool, i'm not interestingnim the node based shader development but the hlsl glsl part really interesting. Have you tryed it? How's the engine/3d viewport can we move/add lights ?

Mrfred

I just watched the introduction it looks really cool, but iI was wondering, can we write shaders from scratch without using the nodes ? Can we only use the nodes to pass minimalistic infos like the textures used?

jon-lf

I don't know if you are familiar with unity but it provides a good enough environment to easily and quickly start shaders creation in a real 3d engine.

Unity is using CG as a primary shader language but this is very similar to HLSL so it shouldn't hurt to begin with that even if you decide to continue your learning in another engine with another language.

This even might become more interesting with unity 5 introducing it's new physically based shading system pretty soon.

Here's a very good wiki that goes on shader creation in unity from basic stuff to more advanced ones :
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cg_Programming/Unity

There is also a wiki for GLSL which provides code for the same shader examples which is interesting to compare the two language.
Althoug using GLSL in unity might not be the best option as it lacks support and documentation it still provides good info if you are ineterested in GLSL.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/GLSL_Programming/Unity

I begun learning shader language here with a non programming background and it really helped me get my hands dirty and learn the logic behind shader creation.

I hope it can helps.

Mrfred

hmm thing is I wanted to learn vanilla hlsl because the studio I work at already use his own shading script based on hlsl. So I wouldn't want to learn a version that differ from hlsl as a basics for something that already differ from hlsl ( I don't know if that was clear!? )

Anyhow i'm still keeping unity in mind and it's good to know that someone with a non programming background managed to learn scripting shader