Shader Snippet Tool

Shader Snippet Tool

While skeletal animation, normal mapping, environment mapping, and lighting shaders aren't difficult to create, combining them with different parameters to produce a single effect is a time consuming process. As each additional shader is added the number of possible combinations explodes. This project served as a way to investigate what techniques could be used to fight this explosion of combinations.

• Wrote the tool in C# and semantics binding in C++ to allow the tool to be easily integrated w/ various graphics engines.


• Features easy setting of automatically binding semantics and technique properties


• Built a realtime editing mode that allows for changes to be visually inspected instantly.


• HLSL compiling errors are instantly marked in red for easy identification


• Added a visual layout mode that allows the effect to be pieced together from smaller snippets


• Wrote exporter and snippet collator to allow for a library of snippets to be created and full HLSL shaders built on the fly as needed

Gallery