SolidShaderTool was designed in order to help different kinds of persons (3d artists, 3d graphics developers, computer scientists, students or even private users) to understand the process of development, setup and usage of vertex and pixel shader programs in combination with the DirectX 8.1 API.

SolidShaderTool was recently used in a practical seminar of an advanced computer graphics course at the University of Applied Sciences in Gelsenkirchen (Germany).

While learning the theoretical aspects of vertex and pixel shader architecture, the assembly language instruction set and their role in the rendering pipeline, the students parallely gathered practical experience in a special seminar. Their task was to develop a phong shading effect on a per-pixel basis with the help of SolidShaderTool.

As a preparation, I held an introductionary presentation about the theoretical background at first. In the next session, I presented the application SolidShaderTool itself and explained its functionalities. Furthermore, the students went through a step-by-step lighting tutorial which taught them to handle the tool and develop their first "own" shader effects. Finally, I showed them the best way to implement per-pixel lighting and mentioned some tips, tricks and traps of shader development.

Being the first course in which shader technology is taught, this surely was an exciting new experience for both the students and the professor (and of course myself, the author of SolidShaderTool ..). Fortunately, this experiment turned out to be a successful event and the students enjoyed this new kind of opportunity.

The program itself is provided royalty free. Get your own copy in the download section of this website - there are no limitations in functionality or time of usage ..

What I have to offer could be interesting especially for other Universities of Applied Sciences. A development environment like SolidShaderTool eases the process of designing a shader effect, but nevertheless a basic knowledge of the rendering pipeline, the shader architecture & their instructions and last but not least, the DirectX 8.1 API is highly recommended.

So, if you plan to integrate vertex and pixel shader technology in your curriculum, I am able to provide support as following:

• a brief introduction of shader development in the form of one or more guest lectures at your university including bonus material (papers about the instruction set, modifications, matrix transformations, lighting basics, tangent space etc. ... )
• training tutorials/seminars for students (basic application handling, DirectX, basic shaders, lighting, phong shading, bump mapping etc ..)
• video tutorials of different topics on CD
• a detailed documentation of the program, its features and general handling
• intensive support via email or even telephone

Of course, these benefits are not royalty free, but the price is fair and discussible. Mainly, it depends on the amount of time I have to spend for the preparation of the course and traveling to your university.

If you are interested, just contact me via the feedback form or via email ...