Writing Custom Shaders

From Multiverse

Particle Scripts

Syntax  •  Attributes  •  Emitters  •  Affectors

Material Scripts

Techniques  •  Texture Units  •  Passes  •  Vertex and Fragment Programs  •  Calling Vertex and Fragment Programs  •  Copying Materials

Compositor Framework

Compositor Scripts  •  Compositor Techniques  •  Compositor Target Passes  •  Compositor Passes

Shaders

Writing Custom Shaders  •  Built-in Shaders  •  Troubleshooting

For advanced graphics effects, you can write your own pixel and vertex shaders in the Cg or HLSL shader languages. You can then add these shaders to your asset repository, to be distributed as other assets.

See Vertex and Fragment Programs for more information.

Other references:

• Wikipedia article on shaders
• HLSL Introduction

NVIDIA shader development tool

The NVIDIA Cg Toolkit includes a CG complier for shader code. It's a good idea to try compiling your shader code with this tool before you actually try it in Multiverse. Here's how to do it:

1. Download and install the NVIDIA CG Toolkit.
2. Open a command prompt window and "cd" to the folder containing your shader code.
3. Run the program "cgc" on your shader code and check for errors.

See Troubleshooting Shaders for an example of using the Cg Toolkit to check shader syntax.