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Since Render Monkey has been discontinued (perhaps due to the complexity of today's shading languages), there are few successors that can match its functionality. Is there any useful tool for material editing aimed at developers and artists alike, but concentrated (or with substantial support for) on embedded GLSL shaders?

Render Monkey itself wasn't that flexible (I'm not aware if it allowed the usage of several textures, each with its own set of texture coordinates - plus, it didn't seem to be that intuitive either). Apart from complete engines, is there such a stand-alone tool that can be used together with a stand-alone engine (able to interface with a custom application)?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Possible duplicate of gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/18790/… Even though the question was about a tool for linux, both tools in the accepted answer are cross platform: gamedev.stackexchange.com/a/18793/1839 \$\endgroup\$ – Maik Semder Aug 7 '12 at 11:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ @MaikSemder He's asking for GLSL ES editing tools, and that post refers to standard GLSL shaders. \$\endgroup\$ – r2d2rigo Aug 7 '12 at 12:02
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's not quite a duplicate in the sense that Shader Maker is currently more powerful than what the ES version can do. I'll check it out again to see whether it does support the ES subset, otherwise one might use something that's not going to work as expected on a mobile device. \$\endgroup\$ – teodron Aug 7 '12 at 12:05
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I used RenderMonkey ~6 months ago and didn't have any problem, although the shaders I made were pretty simple.

It looks like the only decent succesors are Mali GPU Shader Development Studio and PVRShaman. The latter only works with PowerVR FX effects and POD geometry objects, so maybe it's not enough flexible for your requirements.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks, I found the Mali Eclipse plugin and it didn't quite look like a tool itself, rather more like an IDE plugin (plus, artists don't usually use IDEs, so this is one of the drawbacks I see to it). I asked this question having a side-purpose in mind: whether to write such a tool myself or not (I favor the "or not" alternative due to productivity reasons). \$\endgroup\$ – teodron Aug 7 '12 at 12:10

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