OBS Shading Language (OBS-SL)

The baseline for the shader language libOBS uses is HLSL, for which you can find documentation here. libOBS modifies this so it works across all of its supported graphics APIs, sacrificing functionality and versatility for compatibility. As a result, some effects that would be possible with ease in GLSL or HLSL directly do not work in libOBS's shader language. For the sake of all future documentation, the language will be referred to as OBS-SL, since it mixes and matches many different langauge constructs into one.

Defines

OBS Studio includes a Pre-Processor that adds some defines.

_D3D11

Defined if libobs-d3d11 is in use.

_OPENGL

Defined if libobs-opengl is in use.

Data Storage

Similar to HLSL, OBS-SL supports storage, transfer and modification of data.

Storage Specifiers

Storage specifiers seem to only be used by the OpenGL backend.

Name	DirectX	OpenGL	Notes
uniform		uniform
const		const
inout		inout
out		out

Types

Name	DirectX	OpenGL
bool	bool	bool
float	float	float
float2	float2	vec2
float3	float3	vec3
float4	float4	vec4
int	int	int
int2	int2	ivec2
int3	int3	ivec3
int4	int4	ivec4
string	string	string
float3x3	float3x3	mat3x3
float3x4	float3x4	mat3x4
float4x4	float4x4	mat4x4
texture2d	Texture2D	sampler2D
texture3d	Texture3D	sampler3D
texture_cube	TextureCube	samplerCube
texture_rect	N/A	sampler2DRect
sampler_state	SamplerState	Metadata only

Arrays

At the time of writing this, Arrays are only supported when DirectX is being used by libOBS. The patch to make it available in OpenGL was retracted at the request of the current OBS Project team.

Keywords

A limited subset of keywords are supported, other keywords may work if they match across both langauges.

Name	DirectX	OpenGL
POSITION	SV_Position	gl_FragCoord
TARGET	SV_Target	N/A
VERTEXID	SV_VertexID	uint(gl_VertexID)

Input/Output Semantics

A limited subset of semantics are supported, other keywords will not work.

Name	DirectX	OpenGL	Notes
POSITION	SV_Position	Metadata only	Provided as float32[4]
NORMAL	NORMAL	Metadata only	Provided as float32[4]
COLOR	COLOR	Metadata only	Provided as uint8_unorm[4]
TANGENT	TANGENT	Metadata only	Provided as float32[4]
TEXCOORD	TEXCOORD	Metadata only	Either float32, float32[2] or float32[4].
VERTEXID	VERTEXID	Metadata only

Sampler States

A sampler state controls how a texture is sampled by future operations on it. Sampler States are global and can't be passed as parameters or modified while the vertex or fragment shader run. Sampler Sates have the following settings:

Filter

Name	Magnification	Minification	Mip-Mapping
Point, MIN_MAG_MIP_POINT	Point	Point	Point
Linear, MIN_MAG_MIP_LINEAR	Linear	Linear	Linear
MIN_MAG_POINT_MIP_LINEAR	Point	Point	Linear
MIN_POINT_MAG_LINEAR_MIP_POINT	Linear	Point	Point
MIN_POINT_MAG_MIP_LINEAR	Linear	Point	Linear
MIN_LINEAR_MAG_MIP_POINT	Point	Linear	Point
MIN_LINEAR_MAG_POINT_MIP_LINEAR	Point	Linear	Linear
MIN_MAG_LINEAR_MIP_POINT	Linear	Linear	Point
Anisotropy	Anisotropic	Anisotropic	Anisotropic

AddressU, AddressV and AddressW

Name	Description
Wrap, Repeat	Wrap the UVW coordinates to be within 0..1.
Clamp, None	Clamp the UVW coordinates to within 0..1.
Mirror	Mirror the UVW coordinates when one of them goes out of the 0..1 range.
Border	Fill everything outside of UVW 0..1 with the BorderColor. (Not available on OpenGL)
MirrorOnce	Mirror the UVW coordinates once when one of them goes out of the 0..1 range.

MinLOD and MaxLOD

Minimum and maximum LOD available to sample operations. Must be a number in the range 0..255.

MaxAnisotropy

Maximum anisotropy to allow for sampling, as a number in the range of 1..16.

BorderColor

Border color when the AddressU/V/W mode is set to Border. Only applicable on DirectX, as the BorderColor is not set on OpenGL.

StreamFX Preprocessor

Since v0.11.0, StreamFX contains a simple preprocessor to slightly improve compatibility.

Defines

GS_DEVICE_DIRECT3D and GS_DEVICE_DIRECT3D_11

Defined when the backend is Direct3D.

GS_DEVICE_OPENGL

Defined when the backend is OpenGL.

Directives

#include "PATH"

Includes the file PATH by replacing this line with the content of the file PATH. PATH can either be an absolute path, or a path relative to the current shader file.

Known Problems

The following problems are known to occur with OBS-SL, due to the parser being extremely simple.

Pre-Processor

#if defined() ... #endif

Not supported, so you just get the error: #endif outside of #if/#else/#elif.

#define A (X)

This will be parsed as if you wrote #define A(X), and as such results in the error: Expecting identifier. As a workaround, create the following custom macro, and use it as follows:

#define parens(x) ((x)) 
#define A parens(X)

OBS may fail if a pre-processor directive is present on the first line of a shader source file.

Workaround: Start every shader file with a comment on the first line.

Parser

float4 my_func(float4 array[4])

The array parser is not invoked by the function parameter parser, so the result is the error: Expected ',' or ')'.

float4 func(float4 a); float3 func(float3 b);

As the parser only knows the function name, it will only export one of the functions into the transpiled code. Overloading is as such not supported by OBS-SL.