RTzen is gone?
- Thread starter Billp
- Start date
Do you mean other graph-based shader creation tools or code-based?
The most popular code-based tools are probably Nvidias FXComposer and ATI's RenderMonkey. Both can be found at their developer pages.
RTzen was the only stand alone graph-based shader creation tool I knew about (it had both code and graph views) but it was IMO not very useful since it focused on just wrapping a single-pass FX shader commands into a graph instead of having a higher level abstraction that can handle multiple passes and arbitary lighting. This is of course very difficult to do if it's just a stand alone editor without a runtime system.
The most well known high-level graph-based shader system is probably the material system in Unreal Engine 3 (pic).
We here at DICE also have a similar, but more flexible, graph-based shader system that I developed as a part of our internal next-gen tech. Both programmers and artists use it successfully for every single material in our upcoming games.
The most popular code-based tools are probably Nvidias FXComposer and ATI's RenderMonkey. Both can be found at their developer pages.
RTzen was the only stand alone graph-based shader creation tool I knew about (it had both code and graph views) but it was IMO not very useful since it focused on just wrapping a single-pass FX shader commands into a graph instead of having a higher level abstraction that can handle multiple passes and arbitary lighting. This is of course very difficult to do if it's just a stand alone editor without a runtime system.
The most well known high-level graph-based shader system is probably the material system in Unreal Engine 3 (pic).
We here at DICE also have a similar, but more flexible, graph-based shader system that I developed as a part of our internal next-gen tech. Both programmers and artists use it successfully for every single material in our upcoming games.
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