If you’re an artist leaning shader programming, a programmer interesting in having a shader testbed, or just interested in shader programming, ATI has released RenderMonkey 1.0. (To find out what RenderMonkey can do, look here.) According to ATI RenderMonkey has undergone a major rewrite since the V0.9 beta. These changes have greatly improved the stability and usability of RenderMonkey and also provided a much more developer friendly framework for the introduction of the RenderMonkey SDK. Find out more at the ATI site here. You’ll need the DirectX9.0b. The following features have changed or been added since the V0.9 beta:
- Completely rewritten preview window including a more extensive Trackball user interface.
- Completely rewritten HLSL and Assembly editors with improved user interface and syntax highlighting.
- Support for REFRAST
- Additions to existing set of RenderMonkey special variables giving user control and adding functionality such as random number generation.
- Addition of Camera object types allowing for per-pass camera parametersto be stored in the workspace.
- Display of HLSL disassembly.
- Addition of many more HLSL examples
- Improved error checking and reporting.
- Automatic mipmap generation for renderable textures.
Improved stability.