Please tell me there's a better shader editor software than visual studio with HLSL plugins

My editor falsely reporting like 50 errors in shaderlab code that is perfectly fine has started to get frustrating. The thing that’s pushed me over the edge though, having to undo every single time I close brackets or type semicolons or whatever because it messes up the indentation. All the google results were from 2015 and presumably for built-in rp, does anybody know anything that exists to write shaders that won’t give me such a headache? I like that the HLSL plugins know and can recognise the valid HLSL syntax, and I’m fine with not having fully featured intellisense, I just wish it would stop getting in the way of the code I was writing by trying to reset the indentation for no reason.

I understand many people say that you should use the shader graph now, but I want to learn shaderlab as well so I can get a better idea of what’s happening under the hood and have a bit more control over exactly what my code does, while I’m still learning. I’m still also not clear on whether the shader graph comes with a performance overhead (with the positive side of that being wide compatibility, of course) or not.

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I’m told there’s some good plugins in VSCode but I haven’t tried the shader-oriented ones, just the regular CPU code ones mostly.

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just wait for the whole block to be indented and highlight shift tab it back :nerd_face:

sadly no, vscode just kinda stinks, but yes shader graph does have some performance implications, thought they aren’t going to destroy a project or anything.

just wait for the whole block to be indented and highlight shift tab it back :nerd_face:

unfortunately, most of the time I’m writing code, it isn’t all in one shot and it ends up being easier and less distracting when editing a single line to repeatedly mash undo instead of waiting until I finish the line, mousing over to the start of it and hitting tab enough times to get it aligned

thought they aren’t going to destroy a project or anything

perchance I just need to stop wasting time with my premature optimising like I always do and do things the easier way. Just wish customising the specific way that my shader is lit was more accessible and less roundabout, but I suppose even surface shaders at first glance didn’t seem to provide the level of customisation I was looking for

yeah, the reason i switched to writing shader code is the exact same, so i write all my own in built in. i would hate to write them in urp though, the documentation is practically nonexistent, as you know.

i wish it were practical, but once unity made shader graph there wasn’t really a reason to write about something most of their users don’t care about.

I’m using JetBrains Rider for both C# and HLSL code and it’s been solid so far. They made Rider free for non-commercial use if that works for you, at least for some testing at home.