Vex vs Vex nodes shaders

[danilo2]

Hi!

I was recently thinking, why should I (or shouldn't) write shaders (for example to render realistic volumes) in vex language in vex code editor and not to use vex nodes?

So My question is simple - are we able to do "more" by writing shaders "by hand"?

(the only additional thing i see now is that we can define functions with vex code - are there some pros more?)

Thank you

[anim]

just a few things i can thing of

for practical reasons it can be more flexible to write a code mainly in more complex shaders with several conditions and loops

there is several useful functions not available as VOP node, but since you have inline VOP, it's not a problem

in VEX you can use arrays, you can also specify UI more precisely than in VOPs with pragmas and VEX preprocessor

on the other hand VOPs are great for quick shaders or shaders you want to alter when used many times, they are saved with file and don't need to be saved as digital asset

it depends on you what you decide to use, performance wise they are the same since VOPs are converted to VEX code and compiled