ShaderFrog – Create and compose shaders in your browser

[bhouston]

This is a pretty cool project!

I especially like how easy it is to combine two shaders automatically into one. Andrew Ray, the brilliant guy behind ShaderFrog, automatically parses the shaders to intelligently merge them together -- something I've never seen before.

Andrew has also created a run-time library to make it easy to adopt ShaderFrog shaders into your own tools (sort of like how Allegorithmic has the Substance run-time library for Unity and UE4). It is available here:

https://github.com/DelvarWorld/ShaderFrog-Runtime

We here at http://Clara.io, an online 3D modeling & rendering platform, are exploring adopting the ShaderFrog material run-time.

[CyberDildonics]

Way to get that plug in.

[chii]

it's pretty damn cool - i wish it is open-sourced.

[andrewray]

Hey folks! All this traffic has got our server a little excited. We're working on restoring full service. Check @shaderfrog for updates https://twitter.com/shaderfrog/status/641645102960500738

[tgb]

Neat! See also shadertoy.com, though it's set up more for demoscene stuff.

[Tloewald]

Looks very interesting, but seems like they're <do we have a verb for HN traffic akin to slashdotting?>ed right now.

Looks like a tech demo right now. They need someone with taste to design a few actually attractive/useful shaders.

[andrewray]

All shaders are beautiful :)

This is a problem with user content submitted sites. It's hard not to conflate the quality of the content (shaders) with the quality of the product (ShaderFrog). There are no default ShaderFrog shaders, they're all user created.

The more oddball shaders (my favorites) are the composed shaders, which are not eligible to be used as inputs to other composed shaders. Only the basic shaders, which are generally higher quality because they require more knowledge of how GLSL works, can be inputs to composed shaders.

[phormat]

Nice job Andy! This is by far the most intense thing I've seen my browser do.

[rl3]

I tried ShaderFrog recently and was extremely impressed. The experience of creating new shaders by composing individual existing shaders is incredible.

In my opinion, Andrew is just scratching the tip of the iceberg here. Hope he keeps up the great work!

[mickanio]

This is amazing! Bravo.

[curiousjorge]

what is a shader exactly in layman's terms?

[ferbivore]

Tiny program that runs on the GPU. Executes once for each point in the scene (vertex shader) or pixel in the rendered image (pixel shader).

[smhaziq]

A program that tells a computer how to draw something in a specific and unique way.