Shader compiler

[endre]

Hello all.

I'm now working on tutorial 13 and have found out that a shader test compiler would be nice to have. If I have any typos in the Shader, i don't get any error unitl I run the program.

Is there any tools like this out there?

Endre

[mikeschuld]

You can use the shader application that comes with DirectX or something like RenderMonkey from ATI, but these are sltightly proprietary in their use and it is not guaranteed that your shaders will just work in them without some tweaking. Eventually I will make the engine handle RenderMonkey and it's nVidia counterpart files without having to do any tweaking.

Eventually, once the console is complete, we will have error messages being output to that instead of simply not working at all, and there will be commands within the scene graph implementation to reload the shaders so you can actually modify them while the application is running and see their effects on your models without having to reload the whole app. Console will probably be added fairly soon as I have done a few of them before and I know how I want to architect it already.

[Chr0n1x]

Nvidia FX Composer saves to fx files, compiles them and does the checking you need. Try it out, I used it to write up the tutorial shaders and my own ones, works beatuifully, you can also preview against models inside the editor. When you save it compiles, and does a debug. RenderMonkey is a bit harder and personally I don't like it because of the way it works with the files.
For FX Composer, save as a FX file and not the project file and just use that in your program.