Supershader: Cross-compiler for shader language

Supershader is a command line tool that converts GLSL code to other GLSL versions, HLSL and MSL.

It is used in Supernova engine as shader creation tool.

Build

1. Download glslang external libs (SPIRV-Tools)

cd libs/glslang/
python update_glslang_sources.py

2. Supershader uses CMake

cmake -S $SOURCE_DIR -B $BUILD_DIR

cmake --build $BUILD_DIR --config Release
# "Release" (for --config) could also be "Debug", "MinSizeRel", or "RelWithDebInfo"

Usage

./supershader --vert=shader.vert --frag=shader.frag ---defines "USE_UV=1; HAS_TEXTURE" --lang glsl330 --output shaderoutput

Arguments

    -h, --help                show this help message and exit
    -v, --vert=<str>          vertex shader input file
    -f, --frag=<str>          fragment shader input file
    -l, --lang=<str>          <see below> shader language output
    -o, --output=<str>        output file template (extension is ignored)
    -t, --output-type=<str>   output in json or binary shader format
    -I, --include-dir=<str>   include search directory
    -D, --defines=<str>       preprocessor definitions, seperated by ';'
    -L, --list-includes       print included files

Current supported shader stages:

• Vertex shader (--vert)
• Fragment shader (--frag)

Current supported shader langs:

• glsl330: desktop (default)
• glsl100: GLES2 / WebGL
• glsl300es: GLES3 / WebGL2
• hlsl4: D3D11
• hlsl5: D3D11
• msl12macos: Metal for MacOS
• msl21macos: Metal for MacOS
• msl12ios: Metal for iOS
• msl21ios: Metal for iOS

Output format types:

• json
• binary (SBS file)

Output

For default Supershader output format is json with reflection info and bare shader output:

./supershader --vert=shader.vert --frag=shader.frag --output shaderoutput  --lang glsl330

• Output: shaderoutput_glsl.json, shaderoutput_vs.glsl, shaderoutput_fs.glsl

With --output-type=binary argument we have .sbs binary file:

./supershader --vert=shader.vert --frag=shader.frag --output shaderoutput  --lang glsl330 --output-type=binary

• Output: shaderoutput.sbs

SBS file format

Inspired by septag file format: sgs-file.h

Each block header is 8 bytes ( uint32_t fourcc code + uint32_t for size).

• SBS block
  • struct sbs_chunk
  • STAG blocks: defines each shader stage (vs or fs)
    • struct sbs_stage
    • [CODE or DATA] block: actual code or binary (byte-code) data for the shader stage
    • REFL block: Reflection data for the shader stage
    • struct sbs_chunk_refl: reflection data header
    • struct sbs_refl_input[]: array of vertex-shader input attributes (see sbs_chunk_refl for number of inputs)
    • struct sbs_refl_texture[]: array of texture objects (see sbs_chunk_refl for number of textures)
    • struct sbs_refl_sampler[]: array of sampler objects (see sbs_chunk_refl for number of samplers)
    • struct sbs_refl_texture_sampler[]: array of texture-sampler pair objects (see sbs_chunk_refl for number of pairs)
    • struct sbs_refl_uniformblock[]: array of uniform blocks objects (see sbs_chunk_refl for number of uniform blocks)
      • struct sbs_refl_uniform[]: array of uniform objects (see sbs_refl_uniformblock.num_uniforms for number of uniforms)

Updates

1.5

• Storage buffer support
• New sbs file version

1.4

• Changed json to be default output type format
• Created sampler and texture-sampler pair blocks
• Input and output shaders validation

1.3

• Changed json and sbs file spec to support uniform blocks with float and int types inside
• Changed sbs file spec to support uniforms

1.2

• Option to disable optimization
• Fixed optimization errors

1.1

• Full Metal support
• Shader lang defines

1.0

• First version

Inspired by

• sokol-shdc (https://github.com/floooh/sokol-tools/blob/master/docs/sokol-shdc.md)
• glslcc (https://github.com/septag/glslcc)

External libraries

• glslang (https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang)
• SPIRV-Cross (https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Cross)
• nlohmann json (https://github.com/nlohmann/json)
• argparse (https://github.com/cofyc/argparse)