• DAZ Studio 3.0 Advanced feature

Shader Builder is a plugin for DAZ Studio 3.x that provides a data flow diagram (aka shader graph) type of visual development environment for generating RenderMan® Shading Language (RSL) shaders. The intended audience for this tool is a [aspiring] shader developer, being someone who is familiar with or wants to become familiar with RSL and the shader development process. The goal of Shader Builder is to make the process of creating RSL shaders and the scripts that build the interface between them and DAZ Studio, easier and less prone to syntactical errors.

Aside from providing a visual means of constructing RSL shaders, Shader Builder ultimately generates a compiled shader (i.e. *.sdl - for the 'current' version of the 3Delight renderer) and the appropriate scripts (*.dsa) that connect it to DAZ Studio. It allows you to visually define any of the 5 RenderMan shader types (Surface, Displacement/Bump, Light, Volume, and Imager) and that shader's interface to the user, whether that be yourself, or your customer.

• RenderMan Interface Specification (RISpec)

• The RenderMan Companion: A Programmer's Guide to Realistic Computer Graphics, Steve Upstill, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-50868-0
• Advanced RenderMan: Creating CGI for Motion Pictures, Anthony Apodaca, Larry Gritz, Morgan Kaufmann, ISBN 1-55860-618-1
• Rendering for Beginners: Image synthesis using RenderMan, Saty Raghavachary, Focal Press, ISBN 0-240-51935-3
• The RenderMan Shading Language Guide, Rudy Cortes, Saty Raghavachary, Course Technology PTR, ISBN 1-598-63286-8

Uploaded - TBD, 2009

• Installation - Macintosh & Windows
• Getting Started
  • Features
  • The Shader Builder Tab
    • The Catalog
    • Applying Shaders
    • Shader Parameters
• Creating and Editing Shaders
  • Creating New Shaders
  • Editing Existing Shaders
  • The Designer
    • Elements of Designer
  • Building Shaders from Blocks
    • Designer Context Menus
    • Connecting and Disconnecting Blocks
    • Editing User Parameters
    • Selecting Blocks and Block Operations
    • RenderTime Script Blocks
    • Output Blocks and Options
  • Compiling Shaders
• Advanced Shader Editing
  • Adding/Editing Block Parameters
  • Creating new Functions and editing existing ones
  • Creating new Macros and editing existing ones
• Importing Shaders
• Data Directories

• TBD Pending Official Documentation