ShaderTool

Really like it. Works really well and the direct use of the shaders in DirectX applications works perfect. It makes writing and testing your shaders much easier.

[b]What it isn't?[/b] This is not a fully node based shader editor. Do not expect an Unreal Engine material editor here. You will be mostly writing shader code instead of creating/connecting nodes actually. [b]What it is?[/b] It is a quick environment where you can feed your shader the required data and see the results, tweak, play, improve etc. If you already know how to write shaders or just learning shader programming and require a nicely designed environment to focus on shader programming I would highly recommend this. Otherwise stay away. P.S. If you want HLSL only, Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition has a nice shader designer which is similar to this and it's free. You might want to try that first.

Does the job No problems so far :)

I really like this as it makes shader development very efficient by cutting out the tedious aspects of such. It is also very useful for learning purposes, as you don't have to spend so much time doing error-prone juggling of uniforms, shader programs, matrices, etc, in the code of the actual application you intend on implementing the shader in. Instead, all aspects and components of your shader are sorted clearly and concisely across nodes that function in intuitive ways. If I had to give a downside, there are small bugs that pop up now and again (at least as I have experienced in the OpenGL projects) that make things slightly troublesome. For example, error text for errors on shader compilation do not show up sometimes (I'm going to make a bug report on this). However, this program is early in development so bugs small and large are to be expected. What matters at this point is how active the developers are at fixing bugs and improving their application. And let me tell you, they fix those bugs really fast. There was one bug that was new to them which I was having and it was preventing me from writing/editing shader code in the text editor. From first hearing about it, they released a fix for it within about 2 days. Respectable and respectful developers, over there!

Sorry, not a positive review. This product is far from finished, and if had had had used a trial version, I would never have bought ShaderTool. The main problems, in my opinion are these: - The editor has less than basic possibilities. The 'find' feature is missing, no adjustable fonts or colors, no formatting, no block comment/uncomment, etc. - Undo does not work well. Try disconnecting the effect wire to a fully connected draw node, and hit undo. - No multiple projects, and no multiple instances of the program. So it is virtually impossible to move/copy parts of a project to another project. - There are no performance tools, even a FPS logging is missing. - It does not sore any preferences, like working in HLSL or GLSL, position of window, size of editor window, etc. - No updates for a long time, and the developpers are busy now with other projects. That is ok for a free program, not for a payed one like this. An IDE is supposed to make development easier, this product makes it just frustrating.

四十年前,四光年外,比邻星的一颗行星上,一位监听员用他一生的勇气,向地球发出了警告:"不要回复!不要回复!不要回复!" 四十年后,地球,陶瓷国,一位大学狗用他一周的生活费,向同胞们发出了警告:"不要购买!不要购买!不要购买!" 尽管我不是第一次在评测中警告"千万别买",更不是第一次被雷作坑的出翔,但这一次,我确实被深深地恶心到了. 表面上看,这个软件是一个着色器IDE,提供着色器编辑功能,以及允许以树状结构编辑的渲染管线.看上去功能很屌,拳打RenderMonkey,脚踢ShaderDesigner!当然,这只是看起来. 但实际使用时,你会遇到各种崩溃,各种弹出,各种BUG.大学课设水平的界面,国产软件的手感,试用软件的功能.为什么这个软件不提供试用?因为它本身就是个试用.开发者自己也心虚,明白(引号内文字用广播腔读)"稍有常识的人都知道,如果我们的软件提供了试用,那些挑剔的图形学程序员,能买我们的烂货吗?" 作为一个坚定的欧喷基佬(OpenGL)党人,测试期间我自然用的是GLSL,据说它对HLSL支持的比GLSL要好,对此我深信不疑,因为当我在GLSL界面里看到Pixel Shader, Hull Shader, Domain Shader时,我吓得都不知道自己在写什么了. 作为一个IDE,其本职应该是提供一个有着良好用户体验和足够的功能的代码编辑器,然而,ShaderTool却本末倒置,其代码编辑器仅仅只是拥有高亮和缩进功能,没有智能感知,没有参数提示,没有任何重构,搜索,或任何现代IDE应提供的功能,我估计除了Dev-C++死忠,或"哥哥用记事本写代码"的奇怪优越党外,没有任何程序员能萌的上ShaderTool的代码编辑器. (不过,至少它有一点比记事本强,它提供撤销和重做了...) 然后我们来说说它的树状渲染管线,还记得UE3/油腻踢3D/SubstanceDesigner里的材质树吗? ShaderTool的树状渲染管线也跟它们差不多,只不过输入的不只是材质,还有着色器参数,着色器等...ShaderTool的这个特色功能做的还算不错,但比较遗憾的是功能有限,不支持扩展,而且在GLSL上似乎不支持MRT...(Camera不能自己设定投影矩阵?我猜是作者要我们自己手推投影矩阵然后手动乘上去吧...) 另外它的教程也少的可怜,我用了一个小时还没摸清它的输入输出变量的命名规则...官网上作者们全都是在讨论他们的另一个作品(某个地形引擎),估计这个软件其实是他们以前的内部工具,随便改改就拿出来当捞钱的工具卖卖卖了! 结论是,这个软件远远不值30$,如果你真想探雷的话,可以去淘宝上,找小西电玩代购,价格要便宜许多.如果你是DirectX党的话,可以试试这个软件,如果你是OpenGL党的话,还是用RenderMonkey或ShaderDesigner吧.

Bought it for my linux dev pipeline and never got this SO version. Been nearly a year waiting for a 2 month deadline and now they say maybe end of 2016. Don't trust this dev.

Great tool to build and test shaders fast. The node system allows you to test everything you want. You can easily combine different shaders.

For a small and quick shader IDE that isn't part of a large integrated tool like UnrealEngine, ShaderTool can't really be beat. It's got a very pleasant to use node graph interface with real-time previews as well as a nice text editor for writing shader code, with syntax highlighting. The latest version brings some nice user interface refinements like when adding new nodes, they are shown as icons and the ability to modulate node/shader inputs via mouse or by sound input (from wav/ogg/mp3) which makes for some fun experimentation.

Interesting software, but has problems. Menu buttons or the HUD in general fails to render at times, so it glitchy Can't maximize the window without the editor stretching and currently doesn't support UNITY 3D Still, worth looking into