Shader Designer

This document describes how to work with the Visual Studio Shader Designer to create, modify, and export custom visual effects that are known as shaders.

You can use the Shader Designer to create custom visual effects for your game or app even if you don't know HLSL programming. To create a shader in the Shader Designer, you just lay it out as a graph; that is, you add to the design surface nodes that represent data and operations and then make connections between them to define how the operations process the data. At each operation node, a preview of the effect up to that point is provided so that you can visualize its result. Data flows through the nodes toward a final node that represents the output of the shader.

Supported formats

The Shader Designer supports these shader formats:

Getting Started

This section describes how to add a DGSL shader to your Visual Studio project and provides basic information to help you get started.

To add a DGSL shader to your project

1. In Solution Explorer, open the shortcut menu for the project that you want to add the shader to, and then choose Add, New Item.

2. In the Add New Item dialog box, under Installed, select Graphics, and then select Visual Shader Graph (.dgsl).

3. Specify the Name of the shader file, and the Location where you want it to be created.

4. Choose the Add button.

The default shader

Each time that you create a DGSL shader, it begins as a minimal shader that has just a Point Color node that's connected to the Final Color node. Although this shader is complete and functional, it doesn't do much. Therefore, the first step in creating a working shader is often to delete the Point Color node or disconnect it from the Final Color node to make room for other nodes.

Working with the Shader Designer

The following sections describe how to use the Shader Designer to work with custom shaders.

Shader Designer toolbars

The Shader Designer toolbars contain commands that help you work with DGSL shader graphs.

Commands that affect the state of the Shader Designer are located on the Shader Designer Mode toolbar in the main Visual Studio window. Design tools and commands are located on the Shader Designer toolbar on the Shader Designer design surface.

Here's the Shader Designer Mode toolbar:

This table describes the items on the Shader Designer Mode toolbar, which are listed in the order in which they appear from left to right:

Working with nodes and connections

Use Select mode to add, remove, reposition, connect, and configure nodes. Here's how to perform these basic operations:

To perform basic operations in Select mode

• Here's how:

  • To add a node to the graph, select it in the Toolbox and then move it to the design surface.

  • To remove a node from the graph, select it and then press Delete.

  • To reposition a node, select it and then move it to a new location.

  • To connect two nodes, move an output terminal of one node to an input terminal of the other node. Only terminals that have compatible types can be connected. A line between the terminals shows the connection.

  • To remove a connection, on the shortcut menu for either one of the connected terminals, choose Break Links.

  • To configure the properties of a node, select the node, and then, in the Properties window, specify new values for the properties.

Previewing shaders

To help you understand how a shader will appear in your app, you can configure how your effect is previewed. To approximate your app, you can choose one of several shapes to render, configure textures and other material parameters, enable animation of time-based effects, and examine the preview from different angles.

Shapes

The Shader Designer includes six shapes—a sphere, a cube, a cylinder, a cone, a teapot, and a plane—that you can use to preview your shader. Depending on the shader, certain shapes might give you a better preview.

To choose a preview shape

• On the Shader Designer Modes toolbar, choose the shape that you want.

Textures and material parameters

Many shaders rely on textures and material properties to produce a unique appearance for each kind of object in your app. To see what your shader will look like in your app, you can set the textures and material properties that are used to render the preview to match the textures and parameters that you might use in your app.

To bind a different texture to a texture register, or to modify other material parameters

1. In Select mode, select an empty area of the design surface. This causes the Properties window to display the global shader properties.

2. In the Properties window, specify new values for the texture and parameter properties that you want to change.

   Here are the shader parameters that you can modify:

Time-based effects

Some shaders have a time-based component that animates the effect. To show what the effect looks like in action, the preview has to be updated several times per second. By default, the preview is only updated when the shader is changed; to change this behavior so that you can view time-based effects, you have to enable real-time rendering.

To enable real-time rendering

• On the Shader Designer toolbar, choose Real time Rendering.

Examining the effect

Many shaders are affected by variables such as viewing angle or directional lighting. To examine how the effect responds as these variables change, you can rotate the preview shape freely and observe how the shader behaves.

To rotate the shape

• Press and hold Alt, and then select any point on the design surface and move it.

Exporting shaders

Before you can use a shader in your app, you have to export it in a format that DirectX understands.

You can export shaders as HLSL source code or as compiled shader bytecode. HLSL source code is exported to a text file that has an .hlsl file name extension. Shader bytecode can be exported either to a raw binary file that has a .cso file name extension, or to a C++ header (.h) file that encodes the shader bytecode into an array.

For more information about how to export shaders, see How to: Export a Shader.

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