30 open-source projects similar to freyaholmer/shaderforge, ranked by shared indexed features. Tags may describe platforms or build tools rather than the same primary purpose. Check each project’s use case, license, and deployment requirements before treating it as a replacement.
WebGLStudio.js is a browser-based IDE and graphics editor for creating 3D scenes, textures, and animations using WebGL. It functions as a spatial design environment where users can arrange 3D meshes and assets directly within the browser to build interactive visual experiences. The project features a visual shader graph editor that allows for the development of custom rendering effects and post-processing shaders through a node-based interface. It also includes a virtual file system for organizing 3D models, audio, and textures, and uses URL-state serialization to share entire project configu
The Book of Shaders is an interactive educational guide and curriculum for learning GLSL fragment shader programming to create procedural graphics and visual effects. It provides a structured learning path and a categorized reference guide for data types, built-in functions, and mathematical operations used in shader development. The project features a web-based shader sandbox and interactive editor that allows for real-time iteration and visualization of GLSL code. Users can experiment with procedural art and share their results via unique URLs. The curriculum covers a wide range of graphic
glslViewer is a console-based GLSL shader sandbox and renderer designed for the real-time testing and iteration of fragment and vertex shaders. It functions as a live-reloading viewer that automatically updates visual output when source files are modified on disk. The system also operates as a headless renderer, capable of generating frames and exporting images without a physical display. The project is distinguished by its support for multi-pass rendering, utilizing framebuffer ping-ponging and convolution pyramids to execute complex visual effects. It features an integrated OSC controller t
This project is an open-source 3D game engine designed for building high-fidelity games, simulations, and cinematic environments. It functions as a robotics simulation platform with native integration for ROS 2 to model robot controllers and sensors. The engine features a multi-threaded Forward+ physically based renderer that supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and global illumination. The system is built on a modular extension architecture using Gems to add or replace features without modifying core binaries. It includes a native SDK for AWS cloud integration, enabling IAM authenticati
This project is a collection of open-source shader programs and playable demonstration scenes for the Godot game engine. It serves as a shader library providing 2D and 3D visual effects, as well as a collection of post-processing shaders for modifying the final rendered image. The library includes specific implementations for spatial effects on 3D objects, such as outlines and dissolve transitions, and planar effects for 2D sprites, including palette swapping and glow. These effects are paired with standalone demo scenes that provide a playable preview of the graphical results. The repositor
This project is a curated collection of HLSL shader code, templates, and visual effects implementations for the Unity game engine. It serves as a repository of programmable surface shaders and a guide for building materials, lighting, and blur simulations. The collection includes a library of screen-space post-processing effects and filters designed to polish final render outputs. It provides a structured resource of examples and tutorials to assist in the development of custom shaders and technical art. The project covers the implementation of game visual effects, Unity post-processing, and
Blockly is a block-based coding library and visual programming editor that allows users to build programs by interlocking graphical blocks. It functions as a visual code generator, translating these arrangements of logic blocks and variables into executable source code for various programming languages. The library provides a framework for creating custom visual programming languages and low-code logic designers. It utilizes an SVG-based UI library to render interactive, draggable elements on a web canvas. The system is designed as an accessible web UI framework with integrated keyboard navi
Blotter is a WebGL text rendering engine and fragment shader text visualizer. It provides a system for composing and previewing stylized text effects by applying custom GLSL fragment shaders to text elements on a web canvas. The project includes a shader editor for defining and updating custom shader logic and uniforms in real time. This interface allows for the creation of unique visual styles and the modification of rendering variables without reloading the underlying logic. The engine incorporates performance optimizations for WebGL rendering, utilizing texture atlas batching and a single
Murder is an entity component system game engine designed for 2D game development. It provides a core framework for managing game objects through an ECS architecture and includes a dedicated 2D game editor for asset management and real-time property configuration. The engine features a specialized 2D rendering pipeline supporting pixel art, sprite slicing, and parallax effects. It includes a hierarchical A* pathfinding system for agent navigation and a comprehensive asset management system for serializing and loading game resources. The project covers a broad range of capabilities, including
Kaiju is a general purpose 2D and 3D game engine built with the Go programming language and the Vulkan graphics API. It serves as a cross-platform game framework for deploying interactive applications to Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android. The engine includes an integrated game editor for composing scenes, managing assets, and designing shaders within a visual workspace. It provides a dedicated shader designer workspace that supports real-time hot-reloading, allowing visual changes to be seen instantly without restarting the application. The framework covers a broad range of production systems
Funkin is a rhythm game engine and scriptable gameplay framework designed for creating musical battle games with synchronized note charts and audio. It functions as a comprehensive toolset for rhythm game modding, allowing for the addition of custom songs, characters, and stages through external assets and metadata. The project distinguishes itself through a dedicated modding system that supports priority-based asset overriding and a data patching utility for modifying JSON and XML configuration files via targeted merge operations. It utilizes a scriptable environment that executes external s
This project is a Godot shader library consisting of a collection of GLSL-based visual effects for 2D and 3D graphics. It serves as a resource for improving game visual quality through custom shader files and demo scenes. The library is organized into three primary areas: a 2D sprite effect gallery for visuals such as water simulations and palette swapping, a 3D material shader collection featuring outlines and dissolve effects, and a post-processing shader suite for full-screen effects like Gaussian blur and color inversion. The collection covers a range of capabilities including 2D sprite
Armortools is a 3D PBR texture painting suite and mesh texture workflow tool. It provides a system for painting physically based rendering materials directly onto 3D meshes using a combination of layer and mask support, a GPU-accelerated texture baker for extracting geometry data from high-polygon models, and a node-based material editor for creating procedural textures. The software features integrated neural network tools for AI texture authoring, allowing the generation of PBR maps from text prompts, image-based material extraction, and texture upscaling via local nodes. It also implements
xNode is a Unity editor extension that provides a visual node graph editor for designing flow-based logic and state machines. It functions as a visual logic designer, allowing for the creation and management of interconnected node networks within the Unity engine. The tool enables the construction of custom logic systems, such as branching dialogue trees and game state machine transitions. It supports the organization of complex graphs through a hierarchical grouping system that wraps related nodes into resizable visual containers. The system utilizes a graph-based data model to define data
This project is a high-level 3D graphics engine designed to render complex, hardware-accelerated environments within web browsers. It provides a comprehensive abstraction layer that manages scene graphs, cameras, and lighting, mapping high-level scene definitions onto low-level graphics APIs. By decoupling these definitions from specific hardware targets, the engine ensures consistent performance across diverse browsers and devices. The framework distinguishes itself through a robust architecture that includes a unified math library for high-frequency spatial calculations and a physically bas
react-native-skia is a cross-platform graphics framework that provides a high-performance 2D graphics engine for rendering shapes, paths, and images. It functions as a vector graphics engine and UI animation toolkit, allowing for hardware-accelerated visuals across mobile and web platforms. The project is distinguished by its integration of the Skia 2D graphics library, enabling a shader and filter pipeline for complex pixel-level effects. It supports the rendering of Lottie animations exported from After Effects and the execution of animations directly on the UI thread to maintain fluid moti
GPUImage is a GPU-accelerated image processing framework for iOS designed to apply real-time filters and effects to images and video. It functions as a processing engine and fragment shader library that manages textures and shaders for efficient visual data manipulation. The framework utilizes a chainable filter architecture and a texture-based data pipeline to pass image data between processing stages without expensive memory transfers. It enables the creation of bespoke visual effects through the authoring of custom fragment shaders and provides mechanisms to synchronize texture data with e
Lygia is a GLSL shader library providing a specialized suite of tools for color science, image filtering, noise generation, and implicit surface geometry. It serves as a collection of reusable functions for fragment shaders to handle color space conversion, image processing, and geometric rendering. The project is distinguished by its focus on cross-language shader management, allowing reusable functions to be synchronized across different shading languages to ensure consistent graphics behavior across multiple engines. It also implements a system for remote shader dependency resolution, fetc
litegraph.js is a JavaScript dataflow framework and visual node graph engine used to define programmable logic and data flow. It provides a node-based visual programming tool for designing complex logic through connected functional blocks. The library allows for the creation of hierarchical logic by nesting multiple nodes into recursive subgraphs. It also supports the development of custom node types with unique inputs and outputs, as well as custom widgets and live views that can hide the underlying graph structure to present a visual interface. The engine enables the execution of logic gra
Phaser is a cross-platform 2D web game engine and framework designed for creating interactive experiences that run on desktop and mobile web browsers. It serves as a GPU-accelerated rendering library and WebGL graphics engine for building two-dimensional games using HTML5 Canvas and WebGL. The engine features a dual-backend rendering pipeline that allows developers to switch between rendering paths. It distinguishes itself through high-performance graphics capabilities, including GPU-driven sprite batching for large-scale image management, a dynamic lighting system with self-shadows, and the
imgui-node-editor is a C++ extension for Dear ImGui that adds a fully interactive node graph editor, enabling visual programming and blueprint-style graph editing within immediate-mode GUI applications. At its core, it provides a customizable node graph UI component where users can place, drag, and connect nodes with pins, supporting Bézier curve connections, automatic highlights, and a default theme modeled after blueprint editors. The editor handles graph navigation with smooth zooming, scrolling, selection rectangles, group dragging, and keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy, paste, and delete o
Cinder is a C++ creative coding library and native graphics toolkit designed for developing professional interactive media and visual art. It serves as a cross-platform multimedia framework for generating high-performance generative digital art and real-time visual rendering. The framework provides a professional suite of tools for building hardware-integrated installations and cinematic visuals. It focuses on real-time graphics programming and the production of high-quality graphics for professional displays. The library includes a cross-platform abstraction layer and a modular architecture
Sodium is a Minecraft performance optimization project that replaces the default rendering engine to increase frame rates and reduce stutter. It functions as a game rendering modification that applies runtime patches to the engine to change how graphics are displayed. The project provides a customizable settings registry, allowing for the addition of new configuration options to the video menu so other extensions can integrate their own visual settings. The rendering system implements chunk-based culling logic and buffer-based geometry caching to minimize draw calls and reduce CPU overhead.
Butterfly is an interactive graph visualization library and SVG-based diagramming engine used to build node-based workflow designers and visual flow editors. It provides a framework for rendering interconnected nodes, edges, and groups to model technical architectures, business processes, and data-driven workflows. The project is distinguished by its ability to integrate custom UI components as graph nodes and its specialized support for data lineage visualization. It enables the mapping of relationships between data fields, tables, and business entities to track provenance and monitor workfl
Ryven is a flow-based programming framework and visual scripting editor for Python. It provides a node-based graphical interface for designing and executing logic by connecting discrete functional nodes to build executable data pipelines. The system functions as an extensible visual logic tool, allowing for the development of custom Python nodes and the integration of interactive GUI widgets to expand scripting capabilities. It includes a node graph engine that supports both visual editing and headless execution, enabling scripts to run without a graphical user interface. The platform covers
Makie.jl is a high-performance Julia data visualization library and hardware-accelerated plotting engine used to create interactive 2D and 3D visualizations. It functions as a reactive visualization framework where plots update automatically via observables and compute graphs, and as a vector graphics generator for high-resolution academic output. The system is distinguished by its backend-agnostic rendering pipeline, which supports OpenGL, WebGL, and ray-traced scenes. It employs a grammar-of-graphics approach to map variables to aesthetic attributes and utilizes a hierarchical scene graph t
LearnOpenGL is an educational resource and collection of C++ graphics implementations designed to teach the OpenGL graphics API. It provides code samples and reference implementations for real-time rendering, focusing on the creation of 2D and 3D visuals. The project includes practical examples of GLSL shaders for rendering 3D geometry and visual effects. These implementations are organized as a cross-platform graphics project, allowing the code to be built and executed across different operating systems. The repository covers the fundamental concepts of graphics programming, including shade
ogl is a WebGL graphics library and 3D scene graph engine designed for rendering three-dimensional scenes. It provides a lightweight framework for managing geometries and coordinating spatial transformations within a hierarchical system. The project includes a PBR shader system for creating realistic materials and a GPGPU computation framework for performing large-scale general-purpose calculations and particle simulations on the graphics processor. It also features a post-processing suite for applying visual filters to rendered scenes via frame buffers. The library covers broader capabiliti
StreamFX-Public is a collection of OBS Studio plugins and software components designed for broadcast enhancement. It provides a suite of visual effects, filters, hardware-accelerated encoders, and professional video encoding tools to expand the capabilities of the host application. The project distinguishes itself through the support of professional mezzanine video codecs, including DNxHR, ProRes, and Cineform, for high-fidelity post-production editing. It also implements hardware-accelerated recording via GPU cores and AMD AMF to reduce CPU overhead during live broadcasts. The toolset cover