Shader resources?

Hi all,

Anyone know a good place to get started learning about shaders? I'd like to write my own for fun but all the documentation I've found is very complicated. I could do with a primer :)

NVIDIA's GPU Gems is a great place to get started.

Most of their shaders are HLSL though, so you'll have to port them to GLSL first. More complex shaders also may not work with WebGL (which is OpenGL ES in a bubble, basically)

I actually found it hard to come by good info when I was developing the feature too, especially since WebGL shaders, OpenGL ES shaders, and desktop OpenGL shaders are all different in subtle ways and often documentation is for one specific variant without saying so.

Also, Construct 2 only uses a small subset of shaders. While you can do a lot in general, C2 shaders are only a fragment shader with some built-in and custom parameters.

Learning by example is probably your best bet. Lots of pretty examples here: http://glsl.heroku.com/ (but some are pretty heavy on math!)

Those links might also be quite helpful:

iquilezles.org/apps/shadertoy

html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webgl/shaders

chromeexperiments.com/webgl

webglplayground.net/gallery

Your best source for learning about shaders in general are still chipmakers, though.

NVIDIA's developer zone is unmatched, IMHO.

Awesome, thanks for the links!