I'm a beginner in opengl, recently I'm learning GLSL.
but I find it's really difficult to dubug because I can't make break piont in shader files(that't usually how I do it).
I also tried use transform feedback to retrieve data from shader files but ended up getting (0, 0, 0, 0) all the time, so I assume there must be something wrong in my setup of transform feedback.
How do you guys debug with shaders efficiently? can some tell me how to use transform feedback?
I usually end up changing the colour render to something based on the shader logic; eg if I expect some value to be say < 0.5 I out vec4(1,0,0,1) if it is and vec4(0,1,0,1) if it is not.
It is a bit slow but without a proper debugger there is not much else
I am a beginner too.
I used the color to verify some values. For example :
gl_FragColor = vec4(N.x, N.y, N.z, 1); // N is a normal
if ((N.x < 0.019) &&(N.y < 0.019) && (N.z < 0.019)) gl_FragColor = vec4(1,0,0,1);
When I had problems with lights I rendered with ambient only then with diffuse only, etc...
It's like the old "printf" debug... Not easy...
debugging shaders is hard
I've done the old, debug to colour output. But when that's clamped to 0-1 can make it hard.
When color coding is not enough, i use RGBA32UI texture as another render target and modify shader to pack needed information of its execution as bitfields and render it to that texture. Then i hover mouse pointer on suspicious pixel, read that pixel by pressing a key and decode info.
It's not easy to setup all that stuff, but it helps.
nuclear_bro - thats not a bad idea - I might try that.
thank you guys. debug with color is a great idea, I'll try that out.