FX Composer 1.8

 

Quick Links

• Introductory Video
• Downloads
• Tips
• Sample Shaders
• FAQs

Overview

FX Composer empowers developers to create high performance shaders in an integrated development environment with unique real-time preview & optimization features. FX Composer was designed with the goal of making shader development and optimization easier for programmers while providing an intuitive GUI for artists customizing shaders for a particular scene.

The latest version of FX Composer supports the following new features:

• Shader Model 3.0 support
• Compatible with Microsoft DirectX preview pipeline
• Complies with Microsoft DirectX Standard Semantics & Annotations Specification
• FX Composer SDK examples show how you can import custom file formats, create automation scripts, and more
• ShaderPerf updates supporting vertex shader analysis and GeForce 6 Series GPUs

Please note that the latest version of FX Composer requires the April 2005 Microsoft DirectX SDK Update.

FX Composer comes with dozens of sample projects, performance tutorials, and more than 120 sample shaders. It supports all the standard features you would expect in an integrated development environment for high performance shaders:

1. CREATE your shaders in a high powered development environment
• Sophisticated text editing with intellisense (auto-complete) and syntax highlighting
• Work directly with HLSL .FX files, creating multiple techniques and passes
• Use the .FX files you create with FX Composer directly in your application
• Convenient, artist-friendly graphical editing of shader properties
• Supports Microsoft DirectX standard HLSL semantics and annotations
• Support for all DirectX 9.0 shader profiles
• Develop your shaders on your own models with lighting and animation
  


2. DEBUG your shaders with visual shader debugging features
• Interactive compiler helps you find and fix problems
• Visible preview of source and intermediate textures targets
• Interactive jump-to-error feature helps you fix problems quickly
  


3. TUNE your shader performance with advanced analysis and optimization
• Enables performance tuning workflow for vertex and pixel shaders
• Simulates performance for the entire family of GeForce FX GPUs
• Capture of pre-calculated functions to texture look-up table
• Provides empirical performance metrics such as GPU cycle count, register usage, utilization rating, and FPS.
• Optimization hints notify you of performance bottlenecks

Downloads

• FX Composer 1.8 Installer (.exe) [99 MB]
• FX Composer Introductory Video (.avi) [21 MB]
• FX Composer Overview (.pdf) [3.6 MB]
• FX Composer 1.8 User Guide (.pdf) [2.4 MB]
• FX Composer 1.7 Release Notes (.pdf) [0.2 MB]
• FX Composer 1.7 Quick Reference (.pdf) [0.1 MB]
  
  If you experience a problem where the installer fails during MSXML installation, please install Microsoft's XML tools manually from here.