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ShaderLabLab

A system using T4 Templates to generate Unity ShaderLab code in the Editor

Why?

Unity's ShaderLab lanuages lacks any kind of preprocessing directives. ShaderLabLab provides templating functionality to overcome the limiations of ShaderLab and even shader code compilation directives. You could even auto generate extended custom GUI scripts.

Common Uses

• File Includes eg include common Properties between shaders
• Precompile control blocks: If, For etc
• Full C# logic avaliable, could write out custom GUI scripts
• Read list of ShaderLab properties from external list and generate Properties and global variables
• Complex shader variant creation

How it works

ShaderLabLab uses the T4 text template system: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb126445.aspx

ShaderLabLabProcessor defines a custom asset processor which catches all *.shader.tt asset saves. It then processes the template using Mono.TextTemplating and outputs a shader file of the same name.

eg myTemplate.shader.tt will be compiled to myTemplate.shader in the same location as the template.

Examples

Look in the Test folder for an example of file include and a for loop creating mutliple ShaderLab properties.

TODO

• Try and add custom icons for *.shader.tt files
• Work out a way to add dependencies between shaders and include files

Reference

https://github.com/mono/t4 http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ByronMayne/20160121/258356/Code_Generation_in_Unity.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LiorTal/20140311/212863/Code_Generation_Fun_with_Unity.php

I sourced Mono.TextTemplating.dll from here: https://github.com/winalex/Unity3d-InputMapper/blob/master/Assets/Editor/Mono.TextTemplating.dll.meta

Notes

Was built on Unity 5.6.0f3 on Windows 10. Not tested on Mac.