How to learn shader development for Leadwerks 3

[Letschki]

Hello All,

 

i have recently bought Leadwerks 3 and have to say that i think that Leadwerks 3 is an excellent package and i don't regret buying it. To all Leadworks developers: Great Product and keep up the great work!

 

My professional background is 20+ years C++/VB/Java database and system programming (mostly for insurance companies). In my spare time i used Ogre 3D and Torque 3D.

 

To the topic of the post. I have some questions regarding shader development:

• What are the best practices to learn/develop shaders for the engine?
  
• What tools should i use?
  
• Where can i find information about writing / using shaders specifically for the use with Leadwerks 3?
  
• Where can i get Leadwerks 3 specific information like the available uniforms etc.?
  
• Any book recommendations regarding GLSL development?
  

For example: Where can i get information about the naming conventions of the shader files ("diffuse+glow.shader" or the dynamic/lightmapped directories). What are the requirements these different shaders have to meet?

 

I don't need necessarily step-by-step tutorials, but some links to articles, examples or code that helped you to get into Leadwerks shader development would be really helpful.

 

Thanks in advance!

[AggrorJorn]

Hi Letschki,

 

Glad to see you are liking Leadwerks. I am not an advanced shader programmer but this is what I know:

1. Have a look at the existing shaders. I started looking at the diffuse shader and from there on made some adjustments to see what everything did.
   
2. There aren't any specific tools for shader editing. You can use the leadwerks script editor to make shaders and test them in the editor.
   
3. I am afraid that there is not much information about writing shaders unfortunately. At least, not specific for Leadwerks that is. The only documentation that I know is in the command reference: http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/documentation/_/command-reference/shader/
   
4. Sorry don't know this
   
5. Sorry don't know this
   

[Josh]

You need to understand 4x4 matrices, color math, and vector math.

 

Shaders themselves tend to be very small one-time programs, so there's not a lot of deep tutorials on "writing shaders". It's really just a matter of deciding what you want. The best way is to just copy a shader in Leadwerks 3, start modifying the code in the script editor, and see what the result is.

[Letschki]

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

I'll try the script editor approach. As my current experiences with Leadwerks are quite positive i am optimistic about it

[Josh]

If you just hit F5 in the script editor, you will see right away what your changes do. It makes shader development much easier than in the past when I had to start the engine each time I modified something.