Digital Arts have simply open sourced an extremely useful instrument for creating and debugging GLSL and HLSL shaders – ShaderToHuman. This can be a (improvement solely!) instrument that basically supplies 2 options… C PrintF type textual content output and a minimalistic ImGui-like UI layer. This makes it straightforward to show debug data and to craft easy instruments and widgets in your shaders, whereas solely requiring a number of traces of code to make use of. The whole undertaking is open supply beneath the BSD-3 license.
Spotlight options of ShaderToHuman embrace:
“PrintF” for Shaders
Essentially the most requested function in graphics programming historical past. S2H permits you to print values straight from the GPU to the display.
- Variable Inspection: Print
float,int,uint, andvectorvarieties (float2, float3, and so on.) straight into the viewport. - Watch Home windows: Create a persistent “watch window” overlay that updates in real-time as your shader executes.
- String Literals: Assist for printing textual content strings (restricted in GLSL, however extremely versatile in fashionable HLSL).
Pricey ImGui-Fashion UI Layer
Borrowing the philosophy of Pricey ImGui, it permits you to construct interactive UI components contained in the shader itself.
- Interactive Widgets: Contains help for buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, and sliders (float, RGB, and RGBA).
- Progress Bars: Constructed-in
s2h_progressfeatures to visualise normalized values or loop completions.
2D & 3D Visible Debugging
Typically numbers aren’t sufficient. S2H supplies primitive drawing features to visualise spatial knowledge.
- 2D Shapes: Simply draw traces, arrows, and coordinate methods over your render.
- 3D Gizmos: Contains help for 3D packing containers and different gizmos.
- Cursor System: A
pxCursorsystem that allows you to manually set the place textual content or UI components are “pasted” on the display.
Engine-Agnostic Design
Whereas it comes from EA, it’s designed to be extremely transportable.
- Single-File Integration: The core philosophy is “one file, few traces of code” to rise up and operating.
- Cross-Language Assist: Works with each HLSL and GLSL.
- Permissive Licensing: Launched beneath a license that enables free of charge use in each private and industrial tasks.
Key Hyperlinks
ShaderToHuman GitHub Repository
Graphics Programmers Convention 2025 ShaderToHuman Presentation
You may study extra concerning the ShaderToHuman undertaking and see the Gigi demonstrations in motion within the video under. It’s extremely essential to notice that this library makes use of options which are applicable for improvement/debugging solely and that can have detrimental to ultimate efficiency!
