An XML-based visual shading language for vertex and fragment shaders

Abstract

This paper presents a new system for the visual development of complex vertex and fragment shaders. The system makes usage of the advantages of visual programming languages. The core of the system is a Java program. With this program users can develop and test dataflow diagrams that describe the functionality of OpenGL ARB vertex and fragment programs. To get a graphical feedback the system is able to display rendered and shaded scenes immediately. The rendering of these three dimensional scenes will be done with the common Java-OpenGL binding GL4Java. Further on Cg4Java, a new binding for connecting Java to NVIDIA's High-Level Shading Language C for graphics (Cg) was developed. For an easy and fast way of verification, and for the possibility of a future integration into XML based 3D formats like Extensible 3D (X3D), the whole topology of the dataflow diagrams will be stored in XML. The concept of shader programming with dataflow diagrams and the architecture of our system will be described in detail. For a better understanding two examples will be presented and explained.

A Shader Framework for Rapid Prototyping of GPU‐Based Volume Rendering

“…Building Block Shaders by Abram and Whitted [AW90] combine that approach with a graphical user interface to enable efficient generation of shader programs and represent the first Visual Shading Language . In recent years, similar implementations have been proposed for GPU‐based realtime rendering [GBD04, MSPK06, ME09]. All of these visual programming based approaches are aimed at simplifying the shader definition for the user, e.g., for an artist [Tat04, GD06].…”

Interactive shader development

“…In a more recent paper, Goetz et al [2004] presented a system for visual development of real-time shaders. Their system is similar to the one presented by Abram et al and it uses the Cg language as a format for the vertex and fragment programs.…”