Shader export

Take a look you built with an Expression and hand it to another engine as ready-to-run shader code.

When you build a procedural look in DNA — a noise field, a gradient, a colour formula, a Distance Field pattern — that look is really a little piece of GPU maths. Shader export writes that maths out as standalone shader source so you can paste it into another tool and keep using it there.

What you get

DNA converts the formula in an Expression into a self-contained shader in the language you pick:

• WGSL — the native form, exactly what DNA runs.

• GLSL and GLSL ES — for OpenGL and WebGL pipelines.

• HLSL — for DirectX engines.

• Metal — for Apple platforms.

• ShaderToy — GLSL wrapped in a mainImage function, ready to paste straight into shadertoy.com.

• Unity — an HLSL .shader file wrapped in a ShaderLab template with vertex/fragment boilerplate already filled in.

Everything except WGSL is produced by cross-compiling from the WGSL form, so the same formula comes out consistent across every target.

How the context maps across

Your Expression can read the usual live values — time, frame, the canvas size, the surface coordinate. On export these are wired to each engine's own equivalents so the shader animates the moment you drop it in:

• In ShaderToy, time becomes iTime, the frame counter becomes iFrame, and the canvas size becomes iResolution. The surface coordinate is computed as fragCoord / iResolution.

• In Unity, time maps to _Time.y and the canvas size to _ScreenParams.

Textures and references

If your Expression samples an image or other texture, the export lists the texture slots it expects (named like expr_texture_0). The shader code references them by those names — you connect your own textures to those slots in the destination engine.

Scope and limits

Shader export is deliberately narrow: it captures one Expression's formula, not your whole graph.

A few more things to know:

• The export treats the formula as if it runs once per pixel across a full-screen quad. Per-element values (an element index, the number of elements in a Collection) are flattened to a single element, so an Expression written to vary across many points won't carry that variation.

• Formulas that return something a pixel shader can't hand back — a matrix, or a multi-field record — export as a valid but placeholder shader. Reduce your Expression to a colour or a number first.

• If a particular piece of maths can't be translated to the chosen language, DNA leaves an error comment in the output rather than failing silently. Skim the generated source for any // error lines before you rely on it.

See also

• The Expression language — where these formulas are authored

• Built-in functions — the building blocks that survive the round-trip

• Distance fields & volumes

• Exporting

• 3D & splat export

• Materials