Create and render hardware shaders

Before you can create and render a hardware shader, you must first select Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager and load or auto-load the correct shader plug-in (cgfxShader, dx11Shader or glslShader).

Technique

Often, shaders have more than one mode; for example, they may have modes to support two different video card models. You can adjust the technique in the Attribute Editor.

Shader parameters and shader mesh data

There are two types of extra attributes on hardware shaders.

• Varying parameters allow you to select the per-vertex mesh data used by your shader. This includes selecting the UV sets, color sets, tangents and normals your shader will use. By right-clicking on the fields, you can select the data to pass to the shader.
• Uniform parameters are shader specific and dynamically created in Maya. Many of these properties are maps (file textures), lighting and surface characteristics.

In order to use the shader mesh data properly, you must know which of the arrays the shader is expecting what data in.

Related topics

• CgFX shader
• Writing a CgFX shader
• Limitations of CgFX shaders
• Orientation of the texture co-ordinate system for CgFX shaders
• Troubleshoot working with CgFX shaders
• HLSL shader
• GLSL shader
• Write a custom GLSL shader