Unity Getting Node Based Shader Editor
by Greg G · in General Discussion · 11/19/2009 (3:05 pm) · 2 replies
A guy over at polycount is developing a shader editor for unity that is looking pretty impressive. I REALLY hope garage games gets a shader editor integrated into Torque3D soon. It's one of these things that really frees up an artist to do whatever they want in an engine.
boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=67635
boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=67635
Associate Tom Spilman
Sickhead Games
... and as someone that knows alot about shaders i have no clue what that shader does.
IMO node based editors that work at that low of a level are a waste of time. You've taken linear code which is easy to read and turned it into a web of operations with no contextual hints (variable names and comments).
Deep under the hood TGEA/T3D's shaders are feature based. So instead of nodes being multiply/add/dot3... they are baseTexture/detailTexture/normalMap/lighting etc.
What we plan to do is a major refactor of the current system and expose the features so that its easy to add new ones and give you full control over what features to add and in what order.
Anyway... still early planning stages on this. But i expect to see it ship next year.