[Official] Feedback wanted: changing compiled shader format

Personally, I would have no problem with this change.

Ideally we would love to see API support for loading binary shaders at runtime from the file system (or by another method) though if this change was made.

EDIT: The reason we would like to load shaders at runtime is for extensive game mod support. Ideally we'd like to allow advanced modders to create their own shaders and load them in as part of a mod.

 

Change it! The "compiled shaders" format is a last resort for us, we have managed to mostly avoid it.

 

I'm all for it.

However, what would this mean for error reporting/debugging? I know it's improved from what it was, but sometimes it's handy to be able to open the compiled shader. Will #pragma debug still give us a decent enough insight into the fully created shader if we opened the compiled version?

 

I'm not entirely sure why you would want to try and port/sell compiled shaders, as you might as well just port/sell the source, so it seems like an improvement in any case

Personally though, I'm reading the compiled shaders to find out various metadata in Shader Forge. (Compiled paths and their pass instruction counts)

If possible, it would be nice if Unity could add that data either into some header, or using some tools to extract that data (which could also be used by a shader inspector to give you some data on what's going on)

 

In a Unite talk, you guys mentioned compiling surface shaders, then taking the compiled shader and modifying it as an easy way to create custom shaders with lighting. For example, if you don't need light probes, you can just remove that part from the generated shader.
I haven't used this myself yet, but it does seem potentially very useful in the future. I understand this won't be possible anymore?

 

Reading compiled shaders is very useful for debugging. But, of course, there is no reason to store anything non-binary in final build.

 

I personally have no attachment to the compiled shaders. In fact I just spent 30 minutes re-writing the Candela SSRR shader from the OpenGL compiled source (since compiled DX9 and DX11 are as they are) so I could modify it for use in the Unity 5 beta with the new G-Buffers, so at this moment in particular the idea of not having that be a thing in the future sounds good to me.

That said, as people have stated above, there is some benefit to being able to see the final compiled code for surface shaders. If there was a way of keeping it as an option to view them in a similar compiled state, but also remove or limit the ability for compiled shader source to be put on the Asset Store, which I think is a silly practice for a variety of reasons, then that might be ideal IMO.

P.S. It turned out I didn't really need to modify the main obfuscated and compiled Candela shader. Mainly just the non-obfuscated, non-compiled blur and compose shaders needed to be modified for the new normal/spec/roughness buffers which took about 2 mins... . Such is life.

 

Sure, go for it.

 

Do it. Just make sure people that might run into those issues will get sensible error messages such as this:

 

So would using modified generated surface shader code still work? I ask, because for those of us that do slightly out of the ordinary things (in this case, baking textures on the GPU with the correct light falloff and shadows) being able to modify the generated output of a surface shader is a convenient way to make our shaders accomplish some things that just aren't possible with the existing surface shader setup.

 

Right then. It all sounds good to me then - honestly I have no need or desire to modify the platform dependent shader assemblies or otherwise ship them. Anyone who knows about that stuff will just construct their own shaders based upon what they see there anyways. So long as copying generated surface shader output shader code, pasting it into a new shader, then modifying it still works I'm happy.

 

What about new platform specific features that Unity does not understand yet? Like it was (or still is?) with GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch. I've used that by editing the compiled shader.

 

Hi,
I just want to be informed ahead - a month or so would be fine, so I can make the necessary changes.

 

See other topic, seems like a great change