Skye Shader Editor
Note: The Skye Shader Editor is a bit out of date. I'm planning to update it sometime in late 2009 or early 2010.The Skye Shader Editor is an open source, easy to use shader editor for creating effects for XNA 3.0. The XNA Shader Editor was build with two "easy" goals in mind:
1) To provide an easy to use shader development environment.
2) To allow easy integration of shaders into an XNA game.
There are good, powerful, free editors for authoring shaders provided by the major video card companies, most notably FX Composer, and ATI's RenderMonkey. But Skye is easy use for beginners and by adding a few classes the shaders can be easily put in an XNA game. Skye is written with educational purposes in mind. For further info on the development and goals of Skye see the following slide show:
Download
Codeplex download site - Download the latest source and release here. Note that the developer version of XNA needs to be installed (see here for info on how to install XNA 3.0.)Documentation
Current Documentation - Download as a pdf the current documentation. (This pdf is also included in the build on the Codeplex site.)Components
The interface for Skye consists of 4 parts:
Effect editor - On the left side of the screen. Editor for HLSL 2.0 effect files. This is a standard text editor with syntax highlighting.
XNA preview window – In the upper corner an output window of the shader is shown with a geometric primitive (currently a quad) or a user defined model. The model can be a DirectX (.x) or FBX format (an XNA compatible model.) This window updates whenever the user builds the current shader.
Build output – At the bottom of the screen is the output of building the current shader, including any debug information.
XML input - On the right below the preview window. This is an input file to specify parameters to the shader, see usage below. For more details on how to use Skye see the "Skye Usage.pdf" in the build.