Table of Contents

Editing shaders

Shaders are written in SDSL which is a superset of HLSL.

vvvv does not come with a built-in shader editor. Instead you can use any text editor of your choice. Simply associate the file-ending .sdsl with it. If you now Rightclick -> Open on a shader node, the code will open in the specified editor. Whenever you save the file, the shader node will be updated.

Visual Studio Code or VSCodium with the Stride Shader Tools extension (OpenVSX) provides:

  • Syntax highlighting for SDSL
  • Context-aware code completion (inherited members, streams, semantics, compositions)
  • Inheritance tree visualization in sidebar
  • Member explorer showing all available methods and variables
  • Go-to-definition through the inheritance chain
  • Real-time error reporting
  • Hover documentation for types, methods, and semantics
  • SDSL-level debugging with RenderDoc integration (coming soon)

Alternative: Other Text Editors

If you prefer a different editor, you can use any editor with HLSL syntax highlighting:

  • Sublime Text with the "HLSL Syntax" package
  • Any text editor that supports HLSL highlighting

Error Reporting with Visual Studio (Alternative)

Visual Studio Code with Stride Shader Tools (recommended above) provides real-time error reporting.

If you prefer Visual Studio 2022, you can also get error reporting with this setup:

  • Visual Studio 2022
  • The Stride extension for Visual Studio, which comes with the Stride installer
  • Stride itself must also be installed. To see which exact version of Stride is required for your vvvv version, check the "About" dialog in vvvv

Additional Tools

  • Stride Shader Explorer: Standalone tool for exploring the built-in shaders and their inheritance hierarchy. Now integrated into the VS Code extension, but still useful as a separate browser.
  • Visual Studio enhancements (if using VS):
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