GLSL shader optimization .. passing defines

General TouchDesigner Discussion
1

Hello all, I have been working with a shader developer on this project and am now in the process of handling the TD integration side of things, a question has come up in terms of design.

He built it raw where parameters are changed in code, punch and crunch, and to turn on off certain major functions he had me // commenting out the defines

This is / was very efficient, because he could use #ifdef statements within and without the void main() {

In prepping it for TD, I got it to work, by changing the #ifdef’s in the void main() to ifs with new bools I setup, but it adds a fair amount of code, and it only optimizes the code in the void main()… so the defining elements above that still burn.

So my new ideas are:

1 - Setup procedural dats to do the commenting out of the #define’s

2 - See if somehow the GLSL ops in TD can receive #defines somehow other than what I know of.

any thought, thanks

2

Right now you can use a Merge DAT to place your #define lines at the top of your shader code, you can use a Switch DAT to change different sets of defines in/out.
Doing this in parameters would be nice though.