Shaders can have visual editors and be easy to use…
It’s all about tracking shader handles, uniform handling, and things of this nature.
Heck; could have built in ai-shader-tracker system to make it even more easier in the long-term…
Parameters would be equations, variables and built in (editable) drop-down options; etc.
It’s really more to do with if an developer; who enjoys that mostly more and or less non-mind orientated way of coding and can handle that level of complexity at the same time.
Blender would be a great example of a shader editor; that works… we need that in all engines with a way more easier interface…
People don’t use shaders; why? :
because they don’t understand them (because the original developers of glsl, hlsl, SPIR-V compiler; don’t know what mind orientated coding is; more and or less) and or the engine is taking so much distraction time that they hardly ever see; shader usage… but for those who get past the wall of delayed time and see the beauty of shaders; there is a heck of a lot of potential.
I mean look at blender shaders they get used a lot.
You provide a supposed example of a shader editor which makes it easy to make shaders, then immediately disqualify it for having a way too difficult interface?
From experience: It’s often those who have less experience with shaders who ask for shader editors. Their expectations can be inflated and there is rarely a concrete idea for what they wish to create with the tool.
Photoshop doesn’t teach you about color theory or composition, so no matter how well you know the software, it is not going to aid you in any way whatsoever in creating good art if you yourself have no artistic talent. Similarly, a shader editor doesn’t teach you the underlying skills and principles necessary for authoring shaders, which means that by the time you are able to make a good shader you no longer need or want to use a simplified editor. Most useful shaders have been written already. It would be a very niche tool.
If I had to write a shader editor I would only add the most fundamental kinds of nodes but make sure they combine into a large matrix of possibilities. It wouldn’t be virtually limitless the way a proper shader editor is, but could have a good balance between ease of use and expressive possibility.
Think you missed the gdevelop amazing programmers step; who is capable of making those better user-interfaces; sorry for not clarifying that aspect as well.
Id make a shader category for each area of universal rendering and then give them adaptable/dynamic shaders.
Color Shader (with gradients and so on)
Math Shader (with equations and so on which can do matrix calculations)
Flow Shader (so can attach, detach at runtime and before runtime on different shaders ;etc )
There’s plenty more of course; but am not in the mood to write them out; sorry.