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Using shaders you can alter the graphical presentation of textures and models. See Shader Engine Support for details on how the engine pushes uniforms and default defines to the shader files.

Basic Shader Overview

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Generally you don't want to override the games default shaders; need to edit in here when tested since it might only be possible to do at game launchbut if you have to you'll also have to gate what version you're loading for since engine changes can render older shaders inoperable on newer versions of the game.

Stock Shader Files

Shader files are generally in the base_shaders.bif file - extract this most easily with NWN Explorer. Up until relatively recently the shader files may have undergone significant changes and were included in the /ovr folder in the game installation directory. These were folded back into the bifs later.

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Define / Default Values List

(Note should move this to Shader Engine Support at some point for single source of truth)

This is a list of defines. This is a list of defines. You can use them in if statements:

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The Version Added field only is filled in if the value wasn't available to begin with when shaders were first added.

#define POSTPROCESSING_SHARPEN                  0x0001
#define POSTPROCESSING_DOF                      0x0002
#define POSTPROCESSING_DYNAMIC_CONTRAST         0x0004
#define POSTPROCESSING_VIBRANCE                 0x0008
#define POSTPROCESSING_GAMMA                    0x0010
#define POSTPROCESSING_TOON                     0x0020

Shader

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Uniforms

These are essentially variables in a sense of they are determined at that particular frame for a particular pixel depending on what the engine has there at the time. These need adding if not already defined in the shader (many default game shaders define these already).

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See Shader Engine Support for more details on this and a complete list of what is available.

To utilise them sometimes they need defining since a default include file isn't using them.

For instance vCustomColor is usable by this style of code, setting in the top level that you want the uniform attribute vCustomColor to be sent to the shader file and then allocate it to the VertexColor variable, which just replaces the contents of that output first sorted in inc_standard and changed with ApplyStandardShader() with the variable contents of vCustomColor directly.

#define VERTEX_COLOR 1
#include "inc_standard"

attribute vec4 vCustomColor;

void main ()
{
    ApplyStandardShader();
    VertexColor = vCustomColor;
}

#define VERTEX_COLOR 1

#include "inc_standard"

void main ()
{
    FragmentColor = vec4(1.0);
    SetupStandardShaderInputs();
    ApplyStandardShader();
    gl_FragColor = VertexColor;
}

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Vertex Colors

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vCustomColor

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No

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SHD Format

Shaders are relatively standard text files, written in c-like code. See Shader Engine Support for what shader uniforms and defines are available from the engine.

Generally each shader you'll want to use for model texture changes will include "inc_standard". They also will use #define to setup what the shader file will do. For instance fslit_nm has the normal, specular, roughness height and self-illumination maps set (the "nm" means "normal maps"):

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