Loading effects {#effects}

Specifying our shaders

For this example we are using GLSL shaders and loading them to a "OpenGL20" device. When using GLSL shaders it is necessary to use attribute names from the set of recognized attributes described in Attributes.

Vertex shader:

uniform mat4 projectionMatrix;

attribute vec3 aPosition;
attribute vec4 aColor;

varying vVec4 vColor;

void main()
{
    vColor = aColor;
    
    gl_Position = projectionMatrix * aPosition;
}
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Pixel shader:

varying vVec4 vColor;

void main()
{
    gl_FragData[0] = vColor;
}
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Loading our effect

To load an effect we need at least a vertex shader and in most cases a pixel shaders. These can be provided to the effects interface as string buffers.

#include 

{
    ...
    
    std::string vertexShader = // Vertex shader contents.
    std::string pixelShader = // Pixel shader contents.
    
    // Get a pointer to the effects interface.
    auto effects = device->getEffects();
    
    // Load our shaders and compile them into an effect.
    auto effectHandle = effects->loadEffectSource(vertexShader, pixelShader);
    
    if (HandleIsValid(effectHandle)) {
        // Success!
    }
    
    ...
}
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To use our effect we also need to create an input layout to map vertex buffer data to a format suitable for consumption by our shader. See Pipeline Setup for more information.