SHADERed

SHADERed is a lightweight utility designed to help create and test GLSL and HLSL shaders. The tool does not only enable you to get more insight about the real-time graphics and how they affect the GPU, but also permit you to better understand and use high-level development tools.

The application comes with an old-school interface but that is easy to navigate, regardless of your experience with similar tools. The interface is based on the window docking so you can modify it so that it meets your needs and preferences.

The program includes a code editor with a very rudimentary code prediction. While at the moment it is very basic, according to the developer the feature will get updated and improved over time. Other noteworthy features of the embedded editor include simple autocompletion that removes and inserts brackets, automatic indenting and converting tabs to spaces.

Even though not available by default, you can configure the program to display the changes you make in real-time. If pressing F5 bugs you, then you can turn on the “Recompile shader on file change” flag in the option and you can view edits instantly.

As far as the shaders you can create, you will be happy to learn that you are not limited by pixel or vertex, so you can even create advanced geometry shaders or animations and effects. Moreover, you can add audio, modify resterizers, blend and the depth-stencil state. You can load textures from files to bind them to a shader and render the result to a custom texture or a new window.

Last, but not least important, SHADERed comes with several examples and templates that are customizable. Since you can start with an already built base for your project, these aids allow you to skip tedious parts of your project and focus more on the creative part.