Hlsl and Pixel Shaders for Xaml Developers: A Comprehensive Guide to Creating Hlsl Pixel Shaders for Wpf and Silverlight Applications

Pixel shaders are some of the more powerful graphic tools available for XAML programmers, but shader development bears little resemblance to traditional .NET programming. With this hands-on book, you'll not only discover how to use existing shaders in your Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight applications, you'll also learn how create your own effects with XAML and Microsoft's HLSL shading language.

In the process, you'll write, compile, and test custom XAML shaders with the Shazzam Shader Editor, a free utility developed by author Walt Ritscher. The book includes XAML and C# sample code, and Shazzam contains all of the sample shaders discussed.

• Learn how shaders help you extend the GPU's rendering capabilities
• Explore prevailing shader types, such as color modification, blurring, and spatial transformation
• Get a quick tour of the shader features, and use pre-built effects on image elements in your application
• Examine the XAML ShaderEffect class to understand how WPF and Silverlight use shaders
• Learn about the shader-specific tools available in Visual Studio and Expression Blend
• Get up to speed on HLSL basics and learn how to create a variety of graphics effects

Walt's enthusiasm for crafting software interfaces blossomed early. Just a few days after discovering how to make pixels move around the screen of a borrowed computer he was devouring books on the topic of computer graphics and UI design. Now he travels the world speaking at software conferences and teaching a diverse portfolio of programming topics for corporate clients. On the consulting side he continues to work with customers like Microsoft, HP, Intel, and Intuit and enjoys being part of the Wintellect consultant group. Recently he has entered the video training market producing .NET titles for Lynda.com He writes for several publications including Code Magazine and TechTarget.com. His current UI obsession revolves around the Windows 8 Metro, Silverlight, Surface and WPF APIs. You can find his blog at blog.wpfwonderland.com. Walt is also a Microsoft MVP and author of the free Shazzam WPF Shader utility (shazzam-tool.com).