# Mapping between HLSL and GLSL

It's 2016 and we're still stuck with various shading languages - the current contenders being HLSL for Direct3D, and GLSL for OpenGL and as the "default" front-end language to generate SPIR-V for Vulkan. SPIR-V may become eventually the IL of choice for everything, but that will take a while, so right now, you need to convert HLSL to GLSL or vice versa if you want to target both APIs.

I won't dig into the various cross-compilers today - that's a huge topic - and focus on the language similarities instead. Did you ever ask yourself how your SV_Position input is called in GLSL? Then this post is for you!

Note

This is by no means complete. It's meant as a starting point when you're looking to port some shaders between GLSL to HLSL. I'm omitting functions which are the same for instance.

## System values & built-in inputs

Direct3D specifies a couple of system values, GLSL has the concept of built-in variables. The mapping is as following:

HLSL GLSL
SV_ClipDistance gl_ClipDistance
SV_CullDistance gl_CullDistance if ARB_cull_distance is present
SV_Depth gl_FragDepth
SV_DepthGreaterEqual layout (depth_greater) out float gl_FragDepth;
SV_DepthLessEqual layout (depth_less) out float gl_FragDepth;
SV_DomainLocation gl_TessCord
SV_GroupID gl_WorkGroupID
SV_GroupIndex gl_LocalInvocationIndex
SV_GSInstanceID gl_InvocationID
SV_InsideTessFactor gl_TessLevelInner
SV_InstanceID gl_InstanceID & gl_InstanceIndex (latter in Vulkan with different semantics)
SV_IsFrontFace gl_FrontFacing
SV_OutputControlPointID gl_InvocationID
N/A gl_PatchVerticesIn
SV_PrimitiveID gl_PrimitiveID
SV_RenderTargetArrayIndex gl_Layer
SV_SampleIndex gl_SampleID
The equivalent functionality is available through EvaluateAttributeAtSample gl_SamplePosition
SV_StencilRef gl_FragStencilRef if ARB_shader_stencil_export is present
SV_Target layout(location=N) out your_var_name;
SV_TessFactor gl_TessLevelOuter
SV_VertexID gl_VertexID & gl_VertexIndex (latter Vulkan with different semantics)
SV_ViewportArrayIndex gl_ViewportIndex

This table is sourced from the OpenGL wiki, the HLSL semantic documentation and the GL_KHR_vulkan_glsl extension specification.

## Atomic operations

These map fairly easily. Interlocked becomes atomic. So InterlockedAdd becomes atomicAdd, and so on. The only difference is InterlockedCompareExchange which turns into atomicCompSwap.

## Shared/local memory

groupshared memory in HLSL is shared memory in GLSL. That's it.

## Barriers

HLSL GLSL
GroupMemoryBarrierWithGroupSync groupMemoryBarrier and barrier
GroupMemoryBarrier groupMemoryBarrier
DeviceMemoryBarrierWithGroupSync memoryBarrier, memoryBarrierImage, memoryBarrierImage and barrier
DeviceMemoryBarrier memoryBarrier, memoryBarrierImage, memoryBarrierImage
AllMemoryBarrierWithGroupSync All of the barriers above and barrier
AllMemoryBarrier All of the barriers above
N/A memoryBarrierShared

## Texture access

Before Vulkan, this is bundled and not trivial to emulate. Fortunately, this changes with Vulkan, where the semantics are the same as in HLSL. The main difference is that in HLSL, the access method is part of the "texture object", while in GLSL, they are free functions. In HLSL, you'll sample a texture called Texture with a sampler called Sampler like this:

Texture.Sample (Sampler, coordinate)


In GLSL, you need to specify the type of the texture and the sampler, but otherwise, it's similar:

texture (sampler2D(Texture, Sampler), coordinate)

HLSL GLSL
CalculateLevelOfDetail & CalculateLevelOfDetailUnclamped textureQueryLod
GetDimensions textureSize, textureQueryLevels and textureSamples
Gather textureGather, textureGatherOffset, textureGatherOffsets
Sample, SampleBias texture, textureOffset
SampleLevel textureLod, textureLodOffset
N/A textureProj

## General math

GLSL and HLSL differ in their default matrix interpretation. GLSL assumes column-major, and multiplication on the right (that is, you apply $M * v$) and HLSL assumes multiplication from left ($v * M$) While you can usually ignore that - you can override the order, and multiply from whatever side you want in both - it does change the meaning of m[0] with m being a matrix. In HLSL, this will return the first row, in GLSL, the first column. That also extends to the constructors, which initialize the members in the "natural" order.

## Various functions

HLSL GLSL
atan2(y,x) atan, with parameters swapped
ddx dFdx
ddx_coarse dFdxCoarse
ddx_fine dFdxFine
ddy dFdy
ddy_coarse dFdyCoarse
ddy_fine dFdyFine
EvaluateAttributeAtCentroid interpolateAtCentroid
EvaluateAttributeAtSample interpolateAtSample
EvaluateAttributeSnapped interpolateAtOffset
frac fract
lerp mix