HLSL shaders vs Normal shaders.

melviso · Apr 2013

I have been hearing a lot about the hlsl shaders been used for viewport 2.0 display.Why are they being used rather than the normal shaders in Maya.I am also curious whether Maya's viewport supports glsl?
Also the dx11 shader for Maya 2013.5,can it work with Maya 2013?I am using a geoforce 9500 gt card(dx9) so I am guessing it won't support tessellation.
Can I still make use of the dx11 shader or I am better off using another different realtime shader?

Farfarer · Apr 2013

If you have a DX9 card, you won't be able to use any DX11 or 10 features.

Doubt it supports GLSL if it's a D3D viewport.

haiddasalami · Apr 2013

Maya uses OpenGL though in 2013.5 they added a DX11 viewport render option. Since your on DX9 you might as well pick up Kodde's shader.

passerby · Apr 2013

ya for dx9 in maya your best off with kodde's shader or xoliul shader 1.5

shaderfx · Apr 2013

The Maya Uber Shader (2013.5+) is written in HLSL 5, which requires DirectX 11. It will only work if you have Maya 2013.5 or higher and you need to enable the DX 11 viewport.

We wrote it in that language so it could use DX11 specific features that do not exist on lower version of DX.

I agree with the above recommendations that "xoliul shader" or "Kodde's shader" are excellent alternatives if you wish to run DX9 or CGFX shader for lower graphics cards or older version of Maya.

melviso · Apr 2013

Thanks for the recommendations.Tried the kodde shader again but it seems depth map shadows don't work with the shader in the viewport.I had to revert back to the normal shaders in Maya for the shadows to work.
I will tryout the TGA PBL shader,maybe shadows will work.

shaderfx · Apr 2013

I do believe that shadow maps is a problem with older shaders yes.
For those you probably need the new VP 2 stuff in 2013.5 or higher.

As for DX11 requirements, I hope we will provide a solution soon to be able to run shaders on DX9 or OpenGL (for Maya 2013.5 or higher) in VP 2.

We only ship a DX11 plugin for VP2 for shaders, but there is no real technical reason you could not create shaders (in CGFX) for OpenGL in VP2.

We just do not (yet) supply a plugin for it.

melviso · Apr 2013

Thanks for the info,shaderfx.

HLSL shaders vs Normal shaders.

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