Sunday, December 03, 2006

ShaderFX is Available!

Kees Rijnen and I have completed the first version of ShaderFX, and it's now available for purchase from the Lumonix web site. There's also a free demo version. I'm really excited about sharing it with everyone. ShaderFX is a plug-in for 3ds Max that allows artists to create real-time shaders without needing to know programming or HLSL. It uses a node-based visual interface - so it makes it fast and easy to create all kinds of cool effects.

Our product launch went really well and it looks like lots of people were interested in it based on the number of downloads that we had just in the first week. ShaderFX made the front page of CgTalk, CgChannel, and Gamasutra, as well as several other industry web sites. We also received lots of great comments and feedback from people all over the industry and we really appreciate the encouragement and support. Thanks a lot everyone!

The really exciting thing is that this version is just the beginning. We've started compiling a list of features to add to our next version and if we get all of the things in that we want, it's going to be a pretty amazing tool. Not only that, but we plan to add new nodes and additional features to our current version frequently and release them as free updates.

For anyone wanting to get into creating shaders for the Max viewport and for game engines, this is a very valuable tool, and it's just going to keep getting better.