Modern real-time computer graphics programming techniques have made great advancements in recent years which make some of this technology hard to approach for beginners. On the other hand more and more artists are using advanced techniques like these to create some deeply immersive and impressive works in digital art.

In this introduction to Shader Live-Coding I am presenting a tool I developed to do on-the-fly live visual programming using GPU shaders, which can be made to react to sound, images or input devices to create live-synthesized, real-time images for live-performance or prototyping. The live-coding aspect enables one to experiment and playfully explore what certain simple changes to numbers and code do, and receive instant visual feedback in the output image.

I hope that this can make an advanced subject like GPU Shader programming approachable and fun to explore in a creative way, and can serve as a start to dive more deeply into using high-end, modern graphics techniques for digital art.


Video:

https://vimeo.com/51993089
https://vimeo.com/159766761
https://vimeo.com/54385033


Overview:

pt. 1
fragment shader intro / procedural 2D texture generation / simple oscillators / polar coordinates / fractals

pt. 2
image processing / effects / filtering / blending

pt. 3
vertex shader intro / texturing + lighting 3D models / ray-marched distance fields


Requirements:

- English Language
- Laptop/Computer (please mention Operating System + version prior)
- No previous programming knowledge required, but is of course very helpful.