Introducing: ShaderPad

Posted by evakhoury 2 days ago

Comments

Comment by spankalee 8 hours ago

I like versions of this that are web components so that they're declarative and you can just drop them into HTML.

<shader-doodle> is one: https://github.com/halvves/shader-doodle but it hasn't been updated in a long time and I think builds to UMD

<shaderview> is a newer one with a nice site, but I haven't used it: https://keithclark.github.io/shaderview/

Comment by rileyjshaw 5 hours ago

This is a great idea! ShaderPad should be able to wrap into a web component easily. I already export a React wrapper[1], so I can use a similar API for the web component.

Give me a few days and check back in.

[1]: https://misery.co/shaderpad/docs/guides/react/

Comment by coxmi 3 hours ago

Nice project!

I’ve been doing something very similar recently[0] with slightly different goals (still a tiny bundle size, but fully typed uniforms, deeper control over buffer bytes and layout, and less setup than raw gl).

Some in the comments seem to think GL is dead, but for me I think it’s just an easier shader language for beginners and that’s most important for dabbling and many small web use cases.

[0] https://github.com/coxmi/gleasy

Comment by rileyjshaw 2 hours ago

Nice work! Great use of proxies for setting uniforms.

Comment by coxmi 2 hours ago

Thank you!

Comment by denntenna 4 hours ago

really appreciate this. As an occasional dabbler in shaders, I find setting up the boilerplate to get a shader working on web painful to setup every time I have to work on a project that requires. starring this on github for later.

Comment by rgbrgb 13 hours ago

looks great, congrats. quick note, the examples are really cool, but the link in your blogpost is broken.

working link: https://misery.co/shaderpad/docs/getting-started/examples/

Comment by rileyjshaw 7 hours ago

Great catch - thanks for taking the time to let me know! I just fixed the link.

Comment by fudged71 12 hours ago

Also one or more examples in this blog post would have been great to see

Comment by rileyjshaw 3 hours ago

Great point; I wasn’t sure if anyone would see this post so I spent most of my time on the docs. I just added a few visual examples to the post. Thanks!

Comment by mncharity 5 hours ago

I revisit the site's open tab, and find a full screen, black background:

> It is 12:56am. Do you still want to be on the internet? Yes No

Lol. Nice touch.

> No -> "Okay", fade to black.

Comment by rileyjshaw 5 hours ago

Universe says go to bed :P

Comment by rileyjshaw 5 hours ago

Thanks for posting this! Really appreciate everyone’s comments.

Comment by avaer 13 hours ago

GLSL. Makes sense as the breezy path, but it seems WebGL2 is a dead evolutionary branch, even if it can be transpiled over.

What are your thoughts on supporting other languages? Or did I miss that in the docs?

Comment by koolala 12 hours ago

It isn't a dead end when WebGPU failed at all their graphics performance promises for being better than it in every way.

Comment by socalgal2 6 hours ago

What part of WebGPU isn't meeting graphics performance? AFAICT it's only people who continue to treat it like WebGL. It's like C++ programmers complaining Rust is slow and then Rust programmers say "stop using it like C++". If you want perf in a low-level API liek WebGPU you have to work with it using patterns that fit. If you stick to your WebGL patterns then yea, your app will suck.

Comment by avaer 12 hours ago

I was speaking more to the willingness of vendors to support. It's debatable how well WebGL(2)/WebGPU are designed and especially implemented. But it does seem like most evolutionary features, if they make it to browsers at all, would come from the WebGPU path. Not saying the reasons for that are good.

Comment by busterarm 11 hours ago

Underrated comment. Our industry is littered with business choices made over technical ones that crippled or otherwise enshittified products.