About Matchbox

Because of the nature of GLSL fragment shaders, Matchbox works well on image processing effects. You can however, create simulated 3D effects using a number of image processing techniques, such as a Z-depth pass, for example.

The Matchbox node populates the user interface dynamically, based on the parameters required by the shader. By default, Matchbox has six physical inputs, but you are not limited to the amount of actual inputs you can use in the effect, since you can use the same image for more than one input. You can also specify colours as inputs, such as black or white; in this case, you may need to select User Defined in the Output Resolution box in the Matchbox menu to be able to view the colour result.

Re-purposing of existing effects is easy, since Matchbox shaders use simple generic GLSL fragment shader code, with no required customization. Included are a number of useful examples and presets, that can be used as is, or serve as starting points for you to develop your own tools. If the loaded shader has any preset starting points built into it (such as in the Duotone shader), you can find them in the Presets list in the Shader tab of the Matchbox menu.

Matchbox shaders can also be used as timeline transitions. Smoke includes some Matchbox transition presets (see Using Matchbox as a Transition). The Matchbox XML schema contains tags to identify if the shader is designed as a Timeline FX or a Transition. The tags ShaderType and SoftwareVersion are added automatically to the XML by the shader_builder script.

Matchbox can be accessed from multiple places:

When selecting a Matchbox shader from the file browser, you can use the File Format box to display shaders in .glsl format or encrypted Matchbox .mx format. Some more efficient, complex, or sophisticated effects can be split into multiple passes. Make sure to select the parent .glsl shader from the browser if you want to load a multipass Matchbox shader (the .mx format packages all passes into one file).