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Atom Renderer Shader System

This section contains technical details about Atom Renderer’s shader system, including the Amazon Shading Language (AZSL), the Amazon Shading Language Compiler (AZSLc), the shader build pipeline, and the .shader file specification.

Contents

TopicDescription
The Amazon Shading Language (AZSL)AZSL is an open source extension of HLSL. With AZSL you can author shaders in one language and build them for multiple target platforms.
The Amazon Shading Language Compiler (AZSLc)AZSLc transpiles AZSL code into HLSL code.
Shader Build PipelineThe shader build pipeline is a subsystem of the Asset Pipeline that builds shaders based on compilation attributes you define. When Asset Processor discovers .azsl source assets in scan directories, the shader build pipeline uses AZSLc, DirectX Shader Compiler (DXC), and SPIRV-Cross to compile the shader product assets for the specified target platforms.
Shader File SpecificationA JSON reference for .shader files.