SDL_CreateGPUShader(3)

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, so this page is SDL_CreateGPUShader(3) — it lives in the SDL3 FUNCTIONS section of the manual, and it's literally the glow-up moment where a shader gets born ✨. Short version: SDL_CreateGPUShader creates a shader you'll use when you're building a graphics pipeline. That's it, that's the vibe. 🎀

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

#include <SDL3/SDL_gpu.h>

SDL_GPUShader * SDL_CreateGPUShader(
    SDL_GPUDevice *device,
    const SDL_GPUShaderCreateInfo *createinfo);

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

no cap, this is the part you actually need to read 👑. Shader resource bindings must be authored to follow a particular order, and that order depends on the shader format you're using. So pick your fighter and match the layout exactly, fr fr.

💜 For SPIR-V shaders, use the following resource sets:

For vertex shaders:

• 0: Sampled textures, followed by storage textures, followed by storage buffers
• 1: Uniform buffers

For fragment shaders:

• 2: Sampled textures, followed by storage textures, followed by storage buffers
• 3: Uniform buffers

💜 For DXBC and DXIL shaders, use the following register order:

For vertex shaders:

• (t[n], space0): Sampled textures, followed by storage textures, followed by storage buffers
• (s[n], space0): Samplers with indices corresponding to the sampled textures
• (b[n], space1): Uniform buffers

For pixel shaders:

• (t[n], space2): Sampled textures, followed by storage textures, followed by storage buffers
• (s[n], space2): Samplers with indices corresponding to the sampled textures
• (b[n], space3): Uniform buffers

💜 For MSL/metallib, use the following order:

• [[texture]]: Sampled textures, followed by storage textures
• [[sampler]]: Samplers with indices corresponding to the sampled textures
• [[buffer]]: Uniform buffers, followed by storage buffers. Vertex buffer 0 is bound at [[buffer(14)]], vertex buffer 1 at [[buffer(15)]], and so on. Rather than manually authoring vertex buffer indices, use the [[stage_in]] attribute which will automatically use the vertex input information from the SDL_GPUGraphicsPipeline.

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okay so, next thing: shader semantics other than system-value semantics do not matter in D3D12 🙈. And for ease of use, the SDL implementation assumes that non system-value semantics will all be TEXCOORD. So if you're using HLSL as the shader source language, your vertex semantics should start at TEXCOORD0 and increment like so: TEXCOORD1, TEXCOORD2, etc. And if you wish to change the semantic prefix to something other than TEXCOORD, you can use SDL_PROP_GPU_DEVICE_CREATE_D3D12_SEMANTIC_NAME_STRING with SDL_CreateGPUDeviceWithProperties(). iconic behavior honestly 💅

There are optional properties that can be provided through props. These are the supported properties:

• SDL_PROP_GPU_SHADER_CREATE_NAME_STRING — a name that can be displayed in debugging tools. (yes bestie, name your babies, future-you debugging at 3am will thank you 🫶)

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⭐ FUNCTION PARAMETERS ⭐

• device — a GPU Context.
• createinfo — a struct describing the state of the shader to create.

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🔥 RETURN VALUE 🔥

Returns a shader object on success, or NULL on failure 😭. And when it's NULL, call SDL_GetError() for more information — that's your group chat receipts, go read them.

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🌈 AVAILABILITY 🌈

This function is available since SDL 3.2.0. periodt.

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🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

• SDL_CreateGPUGraphicsPipeline(3)
• SDL_ReleaseGPUShader(3)

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this one shipped as part of Simple Directmedia Layer, version SDL 3.4.18 — written by the SDL crew, mwah, tysm for the GPU API, we are obsessed 🧚✨