The following is a collection of modern shader programming resources. I intend to improve my knowledge of shader programming and intended to gather all the current resources I could access together in one place. This resource (mostly) ignores HLSL ( Direct3D ) and custom implementations, like Unity3D.
Please note, this resource is only about shader programming only. There exist tons of resources that are about OpenGL programming, which as a subset includes GLSL. I covered many of these resources in my previous Modern OpenGL Resources round-up. So if you are looking for tutorials, samples and books on OpenGL programming, you should start there.
Sites
Online shader editor tool with realtime preview and samples as well as error console.
An absolute must visit. Think of it as the gitbhub for shaders. Create, share and view hundreds of others shaders. The site is awesome, but a warning. It will absolutely kick the crap out of your browser, as the home page, somewhat dumbly, opens dozens of shaders at once.
Online GL shader editor/validator/preview similar to Kick.js. Open sourced MIT license.
Another site for discovering and sharing shaders, including a simple editor.
For tutorials links see the Modern OpenGL Resources round-up.
Tools
Among other functionality, Nsight provides a GLSL/HLSL shader editor and enables shader debugging. For Mac/Linux it’s available for Eclipse, but on Windows it’s a Visual Studio plugin. Unfortunately, Visual Studio 2013 isn’t supported yet and Express versions do not support plugins, so I have not tried it yet.
AMD’s GPU toolset. Includes a shader editor and debugger, but sadly it’s currently HLSL only. Worse, its DX11 only, meaning the converter probably wont work.
Tool for analysing shader performance, doth GLSL and HLSL.
Cross platform tool for 3D prototyping. Load a 3D object and see your shader in action.
Convert DirectX9 HLSL shaders to GLSL. Was originally released by AMD, then forked by someone on the Unity team. Useful if trying to support both renderers, or using a tool that exports only HLSL shaders. It’s open source and apparently the source is pretty awful.
nVidia’s shader IDE. Abandoned, doesn’t directly support GLSL. 🙁
AMD/ATI’s shader IDE. Also abandoned, a long time ago. 🙁
GLSL IDE. It’s old but seemingly was updated last year. Didn’t run due to need to install component that required a license server. I hate installing license servers to my machine.
Apple include a development environment for developing and testing GL shaders. It is however OS/X only and you need to log in to their developer portal to download. The Guide is available without logging in.
An open source, cross platform shader editor inspired by Apple’s Shader Builder.
First off, this exports HLSL to GLSL ( see HLSL2GLSL above ) and is aimed at XAML/Silverlight developers. It does however include a shader editor and the ability to preview the results. Last updated July 14th, 2012.
A simple tool for learning shader programming. Includes the course work the tool is meant to supplement. Last updated Dec 7, 2011.
Eclipse plugin for developing shaders ( vertex and pixel ) inside the Eclipse IDE. Provides syntax colouring and error/warnings.
Books ( Shader specific )
Dec 2013, Packt
116 Pages
OpenGL 4 Shading Language Cookbook 2nd Edition
Dec 2013, Packt
394 Pages
For some reason, Safari version is Second Edition, while on Amazon I can only find the first edition published in 2011.
Graphics Shaders: Theory and Practice, 2nd Edition
Nov 2011, CRC Press
518 Pages
OpenGL Shading Language, 3rd Edition
July 2009, Addison-Wesley
792 Pages
Once again, the above are simply books *dedicated* to shader programming and GLSL in specific. Any modern OpenGL text will have a great deal of content on shader programming. In fact, if it doesn’t you probably shouldn’t touch it, as it is heavily out of date.