Hi!

I'm working on a (very basic) OpenGL graphics engine using the programmable pipeline.
You can get some more info about it on my blog
deorbit
(The link URL contain the word "renderman", which of course is something different.)

RenderMonkey was in my view a fantastic tool for prototyping and writing shader code, but the project has been discontinued for quite a while and the application is not for linux.

Now I'm thinking of a use for my simple graphics engine and one idea is to create an open source alternative for linux (initially). One reason for the abandonment of such IDE's/tools was, if I've understood it correctly, that the lack of fixed functionality (and variables) in modern OpenGL makes it difficult to create a general tool. More specific, since the general vertex attributes are arbitrary nowadays, the application does not know what to expect. The stream mapping in RenderMonkey 1.82 seems to work good for common cases (except for the TEXCOORD, which I haven't got working), and maybe there are variations of their mapping solution which could work.

I'm curious about how interesting this idea is to you. Would it be a project worth of further investigation and something to pursue? Why or why not?

Please tell me your thoughts and if you follow my link above you can vote in a poll.