BTW, if you think you have a great shader send it to me (see link on sidebar).

Generative Shaders

There are a handful of generative shaders in Shazzam.  Generative shader ignore any of the underlying pixels in the source and draw their own pixels.  Take this Generative_Star.fx shader for example.  It’s drawing a four pointed star.

Figure 1 – Generative_Star.fx

Figure 2 – Generative_Star property setters.

Figure 3 – Generative_Mandelbrot.fx

Figure 4 – Generative_Bands.fx

New and interesting shaders

I continue to find and invent new pixel shaders for Shazzam. Here are  few of my new samples and some from the community.

First, a look at the original image.

Figure 5 – Original image.

The first shader I want to look at is the ApplyTextureMap.fx shader.  There is a more detailed post about this shader on this site.  ApplyTextureMap takes a second texture and morphs the pixels of the original.  A common use for this in painting programs is to apply noise or canvas texture to the image.

Fiigure 6 – Morphed image.

Glass Tiles: This shader comes from Fakhruddin Faizal.

Figure 7 – GlassTiles.fx

PaperFold:  From SilverlightShow

Figure 8 – Paperfold.fx

Circles:  This is one of mine.

Figure 9 – Circles.fx

Figure 10 – Circles1.fx

FrostedOutline: Also from Fakhruddin Faizal.

Figure 11 – FrostedOutline.fx

I really like the frosted look on this sample image.

Figure 12 – Sample

Figure 13 – Sample with FrostedOutline applied.

Microsoft shaders

While I was working on the first version of Shazzam the WPF team released sample shaders on CodePlex.   I contacted them and asked if I could include them in Shazzam and they gave me a enthusiastic ‘yes!”.  So most of those shaders wound up inside Shazzam.  Version 1.3 adds the Transition effects from Microsoft.   But I’ll show you those shaders in another post.

Version 1.3 release date:  July 14, 2010

Do you know about the Shazzam twitter feed?

http://twitter.com/shazzamtool

Shazzam Shader Editor 1.3 is now available on shazzam-tool.com (July 14th, 2010.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

How did Shazzam ended up with a dependency on the DirectX SDK?  You see there’s a couple ways to compile a pixel shader in DirectX.  The technique you frequently see mentioned is to use the command line utility called FXC.exe.   FXC works great but there is one tiny problem. It’s only available in the DirectX SDK. This might be a good time to mention that the current SDK is nearly 1 GB in size. Yes, that means to run Shazzam you have to download this gargantuan installer and wait 30 minutes for it to finish installing before you can even use Shazzam.

To remove the the dependency all you need to do is remove the call to FXC and find a way to invoke the DirectX DLLs directly. There are a couple techniques to accomplish this, and they all rely on making PInvoke calls.  Earlier releases of Shazzam attempted to get the correct PInvoke code but it was never quite right. Short story, we keep relying on FXC to do the job.

DirectX Ninja to the rescue

http://jmorrill.hjtcentral.com/

Jeremiah Morrill, or Jer to his friends, has a long history of working with .NET and DirectX.  He created the WPF media kit and the Laser Graffiti application.  He’s busy in the Silverlight world too, working on the SilverlightEncoder and SilverlightViewport. He’s the hero of this story because he’s the guy that wrote the new compiler code for Shazzam 1.3.

Three months ago, Jer and I  got together during the Expression Blend event at MIX10.  Over a few Irish beers we got to talking about the trouble with the SDK.  He volunteered to take a look at the problem and a couple months later he sent me the PInvoke code to make the DirectX compiler work. 

It wasn’t all a cakewalk however. Jer’s code worked great but we struggled with making the DirectX calls work and ensure that the correct DLLs were in place.  There were a number of complications which were discovered during testing but we worked them all out.

No more SDK

It’s with great pleasure that I can announce that Shazzam 1.3 is SDK free and works as soon as you install it on your computer. Time to celebrate.

• On the main stage – by  Larry Brown.

Change to Settings Pane

One side effect of this change is that you no longer need to configure the path to FXE.exe in the Shazzam settings pane. The setting has been removed.

Release date:  July 12, 2010

Do you know about the Shazzam twitter feed?

http://twitter.com/shazzamtool

http://blog.shazzam-tool.com/index.php/community/

How are you using Shazzam?

I’m amazed at the applications that are being created with pixel shaders.  Shazzam plays a small part in the development lifetime of some of these projects.

Do you have your own project that you are proud to show off? Did you use Shazzam to generate your shaders?

Submit your Project and I’ll add it to the community page.

Who’s wearing the Shazzam shirt?

Here’s a few pictures of people wearing our Shazzam T-shirts during the MIX10 conference in March 2010.

Figure 1:  Jaime Rodriguez, Adam Kinney, Brennon Williams

Figure 2: Laurent Bugnion and Cory Plotts

Videos too

Cory was wearing his Shazzam colors during this video.

Feeling left out?

Want your own Shazzam shirt?   If you didn’t get a chance to go to MIX you can still get one.  Just go to the Shazzam store and pick our your own shirt.  Proceeds help support development of Shazzam.

The top half of the Shazzam screen is where you find all the sample test items.  This includes six sample images.

Figure 1: Sample image tabs.

You can add your own image in the Custom Image tab via the File menu.

Figure 2:  File menu.

Figure 3: Your custom image.

Trying out the effect

Once you have your HLSL code ready you apply the affect by pressing the F7 key.  The shader is applied to all eight samples. Here you can see the WaveWarper effect applied to the custom image.

Figure 4: WaveWarper effect applied.

What’s new in version 1.2?

There are two new tabs added to the tab section in v1.2.  The first is a sample UI consisted of a few buttons and a listbox.  The second is a media tab, which plays a sample video.  You can add your own video via the File menu.  Yes, that’s right.  You can play an video and apply a shader while it is running.

Figure 5: UI sample tab.

Figure 6: Sample video tab.

Figure 7: Sample video with WaveWarper effect applied.

One of my favorite new features in Shazzam 1.1 is the HLSL meta data tags.  Shazzam reads a small set of optional XML tags embedded in your HLSL and uses this meta data to inject information into your generated class.  Plus there are tags for setting default, minimum and maximum values that propagate to the shader testing screen.

Shazzam MetaTags

In order to keep the HLSL compiler happy the tags are placed in a comment line.  Use the triple-slash /// syntax to differentiate Shazzam comments from HLSL comments.

Available Tags

<class>:  The class tag specifies your desired Class name for the generated code file.

<namespace>: The namespace tag specifies your desired .NET namespace for the generated code file.

<description>: The description tag injects an XML comment above your class definition in the generated code file.

Example HLSL

//------------------------------------------------------------
// Specify a default Class name for the generated file
/// <class>DemoEffect</class>
//-------------------------------------------------------------
// Specify the default >NET namespace for generated file.
/// <namespace>Shazzam.Shaders</namespace>
//-------------------------------------------------------------
// Provide a description for this Shader
// Shazzam will generate XML comments from this description
/// <description>An effect that demonstrates the Shazzam features.</description>

Figure 1:  Generated class code.

Testing Screen MetaTags

The next set of Meta Tags is used to pass information to the Shazzam test page.   You can specify minValue, maxValue, defaultValue and summary values for each HLSL register.  The generated C# or VB class uses these value as defaults for the class properties.  Plus every time your shader.fx code is compiled the testing UI is initialized with these settings.  No more reentering values every time you compile the shader!

<summary>:  Provide a summary describing the purpose of this variable.  A summary tooltip will appear in the testing window.

<minValue>: Provide a default value for the minimum textbox.  Note that you can set the value in the text box to a lower number than the minimum.  minValue merely provides the starting value for the textbox.

<maxValue>: Provide a default value for the maximum textbox.  Note that you can set the value in the text box to a higher number than the maximum.  maxValue merely provides the starting value for the textbox.

<defaultValue>: Provide a starting value for the Value slider control.

Example HLSL

// Causes a tooltip to show in Shazzam.

/// <summary>Summarize the purpose of this variable.</summary> 

/// <minValue>-20</minValue>  // provide minimum initial value for the register.
/// <maxValue>300</maxValue>  // provide maximum initial value for the register.
/// <defaultValue>120</defaultValue> // provide default value for the register.
float  SampleFloatWithXML: register(C1);

Figure 2:  Min, Max and Default values in the Shader Settings view.

Summary

[Shazzam 1.1 was released on October 11, 2009]

See a list of additional help pages here.

Install your own copy of the free Shazzam Pixel Shader Utility here.

[reposted from wpfwonderland]

Shazzam is changing. There hasn’t been much improvement to Shazzam this year and that’s a shame.  Especially since there is an influx of Silverlight developers exploring the benefits that pixel shaders bring to their projects.

Many of you have discovered Shazzam via enthusiastic support from the WPF and  Silverlight community.  Thank you Laurent Bugnion, Josh Smith, daneshmandi, Karl Shifflett, Adam Kinney, Craig Shoemaker and Polymorphic Podcast, Channel9, Andy Beaulieu, Bill Reiss, René Schulte, the Silverlight 3 Programmer’s Reference crew,  Dave Campbell (WynApse and Silverlight Cream) , Tim Heuer, Jeff Prosise, Matt Castro and many more that I don’t have links for.

I’m flattered that my little utility is finding a home on so many desktops. It’s nice to hear about the projects you’ve created with Shazzam’s help.  For example, check out daneshmandis Face Maker application for an superb example of WPF in action.  Being developers you’ve not been shy about expressing your desire for new features either. Which brings me to Eric.

Agent of Change

Say hello to Eric Stollnitz.s

Eric has worked at Microsoft for seven years, first helping to create the Expression Blend user-interface design tool, and more recently helping the Interactive Visual Media group of Microsoft Research develop innovative ideas into shipping software.

Some of you might know his work.  He was on the Expression Blend team and also did some work on Peter Blois’s Snoop utility. 

Eric has been a great help in getting development on Shazzam moving again.  It all started when he wanted to make a couple changes to improve Shazzam’s ability to generate Silverlight shaders.   Here’s Eric explaining how he got involved, “Yeah, at first I just wanted two features: remembering default values for shader registers, and generating Silverlight-compatible C# code.  Then it kind of snowballed…”

Snowballed is an understatement.  Eric has done some great work on the project.  I will be chronicling improvements in the next release (many of which are from him) over the next couple days but first let me give you glimpse one of Eric’s contributions.

You can specify minValue, maxValue and defaultValue for values for registers using triple-slash comments in the shader code.  The generated C#-VB class gets these values supplied for the defaults.  Plus the testing UI is initialized with these settings too.  No more reentering values every time you compile the shader!

There’s plenty of other changes.  Stay tuned.

As always, you can install Shazzam from the shazzam-tool.com site.   The new version will be available by next week.

News and discussion regarding the Shazzam Pixel Shader Utility.

Yes, that’s the goal.  To have a place to describe upcoming changes, bug fixes, etc and keep you up to date on the shazzam world.

Thanks for using Shazzam.

Walt Ritscher