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Top 23 Shader Open-Source Projects
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3d-game-shaders-for-beginners
🎮 A step-by-step guide to implementing SSAO, depth of field, lighting, normal mapping, and more for your 3D game.
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InfluxDB
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
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UnityURPToonLitShaderExample
A very simple toon lit shader example, for you to learn writing custom lit shader in Unity URP
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UIEffect
UIEffect is an open-source package that allows you to intuitively apply rich UI effects directly from the Inspector or via code. Combine various filters, such as grayscale, blur, and dissolve, to decorate your UI with a unique visual style!
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Unity-Script-Collection
A maintained collection of useful & free unity scripts / library's / plugins and extensions
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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glslang
Khronos-reference front end for GLSL/ESSL, partial front end for HLSL, and a SPIR-V generator.
Newer editions of Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware Software Interface covers GPUs [1]
Multiflow still has some relevant ideas [2]
Programming on Parallel Machines: GPU, Multicore, Clusters and More. Gives you a look at some of the issues [3]
SPIRV-VM is a virtual machine for executing SPIR-V shaders [4]
NyuziRaster: Optimizing Rasterizer Performance and Energy in the Nyuzi Open Source GPU [5]
Ocelot is a modular dynamic compilation framework for heterogeneous systems, providing various backend targets for CUDA programs and analysis modules for the PTX virtual instruction set. [6]
glslang is the Khronos-reference front end for GLSL/ESSL, partial front end for HLSL, and a SPIR-V generator.
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83895.Computer_Organizat...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiflow
[3]: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/parprocbook
[4]: https://github.com/dfranx/SPIRV-VM
[5]: https://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~millerti/nyuziraster.pdf
[6]:https://code.google.com/archive/p/gpuocelot/
[7]: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang
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lygia
LYGIA, it's a granular and multi-language (GLSL, HLSL, Metal, WGSL, WEGL and CUDA) shader library designed for performance and flexibility
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ComputeSharp
A .NET library to run C# code in parallel on the GPU through DX12, D2D1, and dynamically generated HLSL compute and pixel shaders, with the goal of making GPU computing easy to use for all .NET developers! 🚀
> RISC-V
The work is underway: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pulls?q=label%3Aarch-riscv
> PTX
https://ilgpu.net/ and even https://github.com/m4rs-mt/ILGPU/blob/c3af8f368445d8e6443f36...
While not PTX, there's also this project: https://github.com/Sergio0694/ComputeSharp which partially overlaps with what ILGPU offers
Arguably, even C++ itself - you are not using "full" C++ but a special subset that works on top of specific abstraction to compile to GPUs, and I was told that CUDA C++ is considered legacy.
The original context of discussion is performance and perceived issue of "having runtime", which is what my reply is targeted at. In that context, C# provides you the tools and a solution other languages in the class of Java, Go, TS and anything else interpreted just don't have. So you could reasonably replace a project written in C++ with C#, and possibly re-apply all the freed-up developer productivity into further optimizations, but you wouldn't be able to do so with the same degree of confidence with most other originally high-level languages. Another upcoming contender is Swift.
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Project mention: ShaderGlass – Overlay for running GPU shaders on top of Windows desktop | news.ycombinator.com | 2024-10-03
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ShaderConductor
ShaderConductor is a tool designed for cross-compiling HLSL to other shading languages
I think this is the way forward for shading languages.
I'm writing a simple renderer with an OpenGL, Metal and Vulkan backend. I avoid using any shader transpiler such as Microsoft's ShaderConductor [0], as this adds a huge dependency to the project. As a hacky solution I'm simply maintaining a copy for each shading language (Metal Shading Language, GLSL, etc.). For a focused non-gaming project that seems easier.
However, having a compiler that compiles a subset of the programming language I'm using for a project (such as Rust or C++) to the individual shading languages, sounds amazing, and would make shader writing when not using a game engine more joyful.
[0] https://github.com/microsoft/ShaderConductor
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curtainsjs
curtains.js is a lightweight vanilla WebGL javascript library that turns HTML DOM elements into interactive textured planes.
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Easy3D
A lightweight, easy-to-use, and efficient library for processing and rendering 3D data (C++ & Python)
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UnityURPUnlitScreenSpaceDecalShader
Unity unlit screen space decal shader for URP. Just create a new material using this shader, then assign it to a new unity cube GameObject = DONE, now you have unlit decal working in URP
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
NOTE:
The open source projects on this list are ordered by number of github stars.
The number of mentions indicates repo mentiontions in the last 12 Months or
since we started tracking (Dec 2020).
Shader discussion
Shader related posts
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ShaderGlass – Overlay for running GPU shaders on top of Windows desktop
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VVVV – A Hybrid Visual/Textual Development Environment
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HVM updates: simplifications, finally runs on GPUs, 80x speedup on RTX 4090
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Painting with Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching
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Tutorial for ShaderGlass
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How do i use urp shader in vroid?
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DCS VR + Oculus quest 2 struggling
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A note from our sponsor - InfluxDB
www.influxdata.com | 21 Jun 2025
Index
What are some of the best open-source Shader projects? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3d-game-shaders-for-beginners | 18,498 |
| 2 | UnityURPToonLitShaderExample | 6,962 |
| 3 | UIEffect | 6,445 |
| 4 | thebookofshaders | 6,394 |
| 5 | Unity-Script-Collection | 5,993 |
| 6 | GameDevMind | 5,710 |
| 7 | UnityLibrary | 4,114 |
| 8 | Pixel | 3,522 |
| 9 | anything_about_game | 3,455 |
| 10 | glslang | 3,288 |
| 11 | FastNoise | 3,031 |
| 12 | lygia | 2,988 |
| 13 | ComputeSharp | 2,973 |
| 14 | sprite-glow | 2,321 |
| 15 | ShaderGlass | 2,316 |
| 16 | THREE.MeshLine | 2,257 |
| 17 | ShaderConductor | 1,806 |
| 18 | curtainsjs | 1,749 |
| 19 | Easy3D | 1,530 |
| 20 | Bonzomatic | 1,422 |
| 21 | Pcx | 1,415 |
| 22 | UnityURPUnlitScreenSpaceDecalShader | 1,297 |
| 23 | NoiseShader | 1,275 |
Sponsored
InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads
InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.
www.influxdata.com