One thing I’ll never understand is why Roblox removed shaders.
Shaders were honestly one of the features that boosted Roblox on TikTok and gave the platform way more opportunities to grow. You could even say shaders contributed to Roblox becoming genuinely popular on TikTok.
Why would Roblox remove such a USEFUL feature? They weren’t even paying for anything. Sure, when RoShade/ReShade got disabled, people found workarounds with NVIDIA filters, and Roblox probably thought that wasn’t ethical — but aren’t THEY the reason people started looking for alternatives in the first place?
At first, Roblox said shaders allowed players to “cheat,” but how is changing game graphics considered cheating? Almost every game that supports shaders allows them without removing the feature entirely, unlike Roblox.
Byfron obviously helped reduce exploiters on Roblox, but I’m sure Roblox could’ve found a way to make it compatible with shaders by working with shader developers instead of completely killing the feature.
But no. At this point it feels like they don’t care about the community anymore and only focus on money. Looking at recent Roblox updates genuinely makes me feel like they’re trying to ruin their own game. How do they keep adding things literally NO ONE asked for?
shaders aint that important lil bro and they looked like trash
Most of the effects you got in the shaders are things you can just do in video editing software besides those which did change a few things like the “everything is reflective and ugly” toggle and things that display 3D data like depth and normal maps.
Also, due to things like depth and normal maps being available, that is what allowed people to cheat on some games. Using certain setups with shaders, you could gain unfair advantages like being able to see players a lot easier in darker areas.
players can infact use shaders to cheat, what roblox needs to do is give devs GPU access (or implement glsl shaders) so they can add shaders to their games
I am working on a real time sudo-radiosity system called Refraction, for shaders, it’s best to allow developers low level access to the GPU so we can allocate usage better. There are systems out there like: Shaders in Roblox have arrived! [Penumbra - Luau Graphics], which seem to be functional still.
Also, people can use shaders to exploit to a degree, its automatically detected by Byfron and can be used to remove fog and highlight things like players.
They said they wouldn’t do this due to security and compatibility reasons and that the most realistic outcome would be node-based shaders, which at the time (like 2-4 years ago?) they wouldn’t add due to the lack of a node editor in studio.
However, animations have that new “node” editor. The tech kind of exists now. Maybe someone should suggest node shaders again with the existing of “node” animations as reasoning.
Hmmm, i see no security issues when it comes to GLSL shaders (besides overheating your gpu), as for compatibility yeah i agree, many GPUs handle shaders differently which can be a bit of a problem.
they should give us GLSL [shader #version 100] at least! since it’s the most compatible version
The only security issues would be the compiler step and the potential for shaders to cause gpu hang/reset
again that could be mitigated by using a simliar system to blender shader nodes, and having pre-authored implementations for some expensive features such as blur or screen space outlines which require more than one samples or multi-resolution passes
Yeah, no. It’s complete garbage. I’ve been around the Roblox TikTok community long enough to know the impact that shaders had on our platform. Eversince the Byfron aggression, many editors have lost their platform and the frequency of Roblox appearing on the For You page started to dwindle.
This is the shader that’s talked about: shameless plug
also, before anyone saying anything about TikTok being driven away is good, it just seems like a you issue. Roblox TikTok creators have entered the Roblox Stars program, and many developers have tried campaigning on the app alongside the peak activity of Roblox edits for a reason.
Maybe just the option to use the GPU, similar to how parallel scripting works on Roblox right now. (I don’t know much about graphics so correct me if I missed something)
A node editor might do well too because of how simple it is, but might give less control over the shaders. You suggested GLSL shaders and after searching this up it honestly sound really cool, my only concern is that because this likely runs on the client an exploiter might be able to alter the shaders and use it as an advantage.
Edit:
Did a bit more digging and figured out that it would pose a huge array of problems, and exploiting vulnerabilities. Most of the problems are because of the usage of the GPU, generally, Roblox would need to limit access to the GPU and developers using it would need to acknowledge the risks of exploiting in-game.
“Haha! I showed you a bad example of editing! Take that to disprove your point!”
As for the video you attached, aside from the added “everything is reflective” filter and the stupidly intense AO, I’m almost certain the other effects are completely possible in editing software.
Bloom is just a simple effect which blurs bright parts of images after they’ve been drawn.
Background Blur/DOF is more complicated, however should be completely possible without shaders, as it is again, post-processing which happens after the image has been drawn.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the AO was also possible in editing, albeit a lot more complicated.
Last I checked, which was a while ago, capcut did have some pretty good options for adding things like bloom, motion blur and background blur to videos. Their color grading tools were also pretty good. The only thing you’d be “missing out” on would be the wet filter which doesn’t even look good.
I don’t know how capcut is nowadays though since I stopped using it sometime last year due to their TOS update which made anything I make on capcut owned by Bytedance and usable in their marketing without compensation or credit.
And even with that being said, capcut is a very entry-level editing software. You can probably do a lot more in other software like Davinci Resolve and Filmora.
Bloom is just a simple effect which blurs bright parts of images after they’ve been drawn.
Background Blur/DOF is more complicated, however should be completely possible without shaders, as it is again, post-processing which happens after the image has been drawn.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the AO was also possible in editing, albeit a lot more complicated.
..no, it’s going to be awful because you do not have access to the raw gbuffers in post. most likely the edited video is going to be compressed with less dynamic range and the end result is going to be bad
Bloom is just a simple effect which blurs bright parts of images after they’ve been drawn.
bloom is done on a rgb32f texture where each component is 32 bit floats. this is good because of higher dynamic range, where brighter objects would exceed the value of 1.0. it’s easy for a shader to look at that and blur the image where it is brighter than 1.0
contrast this with manually editing it in post, it’s going to be genuinely awful as the editing is probably done on RGB8 which is limited dynamic range and it’s easy for artifacting to appear, not to mention the potential compression artifacts in the image
afiak, roblox doesn’t even output in hdr yet or have an explicit option to, which if they did, would’ve voided my argument because then that hdr output can be used for high quality bloom, along with setting obs to record in hdr to be edited in post
Background Blur/DOF is more complicated, however should be completely possible without shaders, as it is again, post-processing which happens after the image has been drawn.
what you’re forgetting is that DOF requires the depth buffer to accurately blur the image. with no depth information, it’s not going to be accurate and is going to look subpar
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the AO was also possible in editing, albeit a lot more complicated.
thats not possible because ambient occlusion ray marches the scene.. which requires depth and normal buffers to determine occlusion.
the only way this could be done in video editing is via a edge effect and blurring it. but then the result is going to be less physically accurate, ugly, and with artifacting because of performing the edge effect with the pixel colours, rather than the scene gbuffers
Let me unpack this for you as well. In 2021, Roblox itself used to repost edits made by creators on their own social media pages to boost their page’s follower counts.
Also, I never said this was the only reason Roblox became popular on TikTok — I specifically used the word “contributed.” This is mainly based on the 2021 era, and yes, many other people contributed too, but if you were on TikTok during 2020/2021/2022, you can’t honestly say that edits didn’t play one of the biggest roles in Roblox becoming popular there. Not only sketchy TTD3 edits tho.
Shaders were also used in other games for editing purposes. I’m not only talking about the overused shiny effect — shaders also add shadows, ambient occlusion, and other visual improvements that make Roblox clips and YouTube videos look much better overall.
For example, take VanilBean on YouTube (one of many others). She used shaders in all of her videos, and the visual quality of her content looked incredible because of it.
I understand, but Roblox could’ve found a way even though they rarely do to properly integrate this feature into Roblox and let developers choose whether or not it should be accessible in their games.
This is something they should’ve considered. Yes, they probably can’t allow extremely high graphic quality by default because of major memory and performance issues, but they still should’ve given players the choice instead of removing shaders entirely from the platform.
There’s always a solution when something brings mostly benefits, even if it also has downsides.
Absolutely not. These shaders were even used by Roblox itself on their social media platforms, and the source code is publicly available. I personally tested many of them myself, and I also checked them with VirusTotal and other malware detection software.
You can’t blame the shaders themselves if someone downloads something from a fake or similar-looking website when the official creators clearly provide the correct links. Also, the website most of us used to download them from didn’t even have pop-ups.
Honestly, this comment really feels like it’s coming from someone who has never actually used shaders and doesn’t understand their importance, judging by this quote alone. But let’s continue!
This is very wrong. A whole fandom on Twitter and Roblox protested against shaders. Like I said when replying to your previous quotes, it wasn’t only TikTok editors using them other people, including YouTubers, used them simply to improve the overall graphics quality. I personally couldn’t stand playing without shaders because of how horrible some games looked without them, especially horror games. With shaders, it actually felt like you were playing a real horror game.
To conclude, I see someone here who thinks shaders are only useful for “ridiculous TikTok editors” and considers them a bad thing overall, judging by how your comment is directed against us editors.
Absolutely not. Shaders cannot simply be recreated with editing software this isn’t Blender. I genuinely feel like you’ve never touched an editing software before, yet you keep disagreeing with people on the forum.
I personally searched for every possible way to reproduce shaders in editing software, and some things you can somewhat recreate are the shiny reflectivity effect, and also some shadows and even that only works if the avatar on the clip barely moves. Otherwise, it becomes nearly impossible.
Bloom effects are basically impossible to reproduce correctly, and adding realistic shadows to clips has to be done manually with masking, which can take around 3 hours just to mask properly. You also can’t realistically do this on longer YouTube clips because most editing software simply can’t handle that kind of workload efficiently.
Roblox shaders cannot be fully reproduced at all — only a few minor effects can, and those weren’t even the most important parts of shaders in the first place.
AO is possible (looks awfall overall) but you need masking and this is very hard to do on a moving avatar, so nearly impossible overall, also like you said DOF is impossible without depth informations.
This guy forgets we’re not on blender and the clip is not 3D LOL.. theres no depth
Absolutely not. Shaders cannot simply be recreated with editing software this isn’t Blender. I genuinely feel like you’ve never touched an editing software before, yet you keep disagreeing with people on the forum.
I personally searched for every possible way to reproduce shaders in editing software, and some things you can somewhat recreate are the shiny reflectivity effect, and also some shadows and even that only works if the avatar on the clip barely moves. Otherwise, it becomes nearly impossible.
Bloom effects are basically impossible to reproduce correctly, and adding realistic shadows to clips has to be done manually with masking, which can take around 3 hours just to mask properly. You also can’t realistically do this on longer YouTube clips because most editing software simply can’t handle that kind of workload efficiently.
Roblox shaders cannot be fully reproduced at all — only a few minor effects can, and those weren’t even the most important parts of shaders in the first place.
CapCut does literraly only coloring, CC’s as we call them and they dont do anything in 3D.
Yeah, it creates security vulnerabilities and lower performance and all. But that’s not what Roblox is known for.
Take Minecraft for example, (bad example but bare with me.) That game was and still is very popular. Why? Because of Community made shaders? No, its because of the development team and the gameplay. That’s what makes Minecraft popular, not shaders. If Minecraft was only popular because of shaders, that game would die very quickly.
Roblox is the same thing. At the time it was known for Blocky, Lego-like graphics, it was simple, and it was easy to see. Now its known as one of the biggest platforms with excellent community-made games. Not shaders, if Roblox adds shaders and all of the sudden make them more popular, it would give a very bad impression to Roblox that “They need to prioritize shaders” which is what none of us want.
Also this raises a lot of concern of games only relying on Graphics (EXCLUDING SHOWCASES). I mean look at UE5, that engine has really bad reputation because Developers thought it was a good idea to unoptimize their game. That’s the main reason why people hate UE5, if developers made their games optimized, UE5 wouldn’t be as hated. Since we have seen brainrot games took off and stood on the front page for a long time, why makes you think developers wouldn’t do the same thing?
also “roblox editors” are like a very small margin of the player base and wouldn’t even affect the overrall DAU if they choose to not add shaders lol
Roblox doesn’t add Shaders because Roblox is meant to SUPPORT as many platforms as possible.
godot engine would want a word with you, because they’ve already have cross compatible shader support which supports virtually every major rendering backend nowadays. theres no need for hypothetics because a real-world example exists already
Yeah, it creates security vulnerabilities and lower performance and all. But that’s not what Roblox is known for.
that depends on shader complexity which can be arithmetic or sampler bound. again you optimize or create different shader variants for mobile and desktop.
said security vulnerabilities would happen in the compiler step which basically is a universal problem for compilers anyway because you’d have to assume arbitrary input
Roblox is the same thing. At the time it was known for Blocky, Lego-like graphics, it was simple, and it was easy to see. Now its known as one of the biggest platforms with excellent community-made games. Not shaders, if Roblox adds shaders and all of the sudden make them more popular, it would give a very bad impression to Roblox that “They need to prioritize shaders” which is what none of us want.
i really don’t know where you’re going with this but,
there’s literally countless feature requests for shaders. people ask for them because they want to make their games almost 1:1 with their artistic vision & for better immersion. even i’ve participated in these discussions because i want npr styled graphics because i manly do stylized work. there is no downsides for adding shaders other than unexpierenced people writing shader code and causing lag or gpu reset. however i can argue that people can do the same thing for luau
Also this raises a lot of concern of games only relying on Graphics (EXCLUDING SHOWCASES). I mean look at UE5, that engine has really bad reputation because Developers thought it was a good idea to unoptimize their game. That’s the main reason why people hate UE5, if developers made their games optimized, UE5 wouldn’t be as hated. Since we have seen brainrot games took off and stood on the front page for a long time, why makes you think developers wouldn’t do the same thing?
I’ve used Davinci, Filmora and Capcut. I’ve also used the shaders. Most of the effects roblox can’t achieve by itself (pretty much just the reflections, AO is native and color grading isn’t anything new) are plain ugly and don’t improve anything, infact they make things worse since the shaders also interacted with UI elements as if they were 3D elements within the maps.
As I said, I stopped using Capcut a while ago due to their TOS, Davinci was a little too complicated and I’m currently saving to purchase the full version of Filmora.
Capcut had a pretty good range of blur options that looked good enough.
It has been quite a while since I used any video editing, again since Capcut changed their TOS, so I’m not sure what tools are/aren’t available to this; but recreating a bloom-like effect in editing shouldn’t be that difficult.
And this isn’t even with me trying all that hard. I just did this in maybe 3 minutes.
Reminder that even the shaders didn’t do it properly. They did the exact same thing I explained. Take bright sections of the image and apply blur. Overlay it on the existing image and that’s your bloom.
Last time I used shaders, they were completely incapable of changing how the shadows were rendered. You could maybe have changed the levels (again just something possible without shaders), but that’s about all I can remember shaders being able to do when it came to shadows.
At absolute best I remember some shaders introducing somewhat properly raytraced reflections and maybe global illumination but that was it.
I never said they could be fully reproduced. Just that most commonly used effects can be recreated to a close enough degree.
All I can remember shaders doing was a ton of color grading mainly with a few extra features like everything being reflective and boosting the intensity of AO.
I believe some better editing softwares can automatically mask things now.
I never said depth would be accurate, just that you could just manually create something to give the effect. Of course that somewhat relies on the camera not moving which makes it entirely invalid if the camera dares to move even an inch. I do know its tedious as all hell but at the very minimum, cmon, DOF is not an essential effect.
Point is, despite the difficulties, if you need these effects oh so much, they aren’t fully impossible to get close enough results to in post.
Anyway, I literally have not seen a single person complaining about the lack of shaders since they got removed. Most people could not care less since the only people complaining about the lack of shaders were the same people making roblox thirst-traps. I literally never saw shaders being used for literally anything else in content creation. They do not enhance anything.
