Shader Workflow

I just posted a forum message about what I consider an ideal shader workflow in a team. I thought I share it here:

Setting up a good shader workflow is easy. You just setup a folder that is called shaderlib, then you setup a folder that is called shader. In shaderlib there are files like lighting.fxh, utility.fxh, normals.fxh, skinning.fxh etc. and in the directory shader there are files like metal.fx, skin.fx, stone.fx, eyelashes.fx, eyes.fx. In each of those *.fx files there is a technique for whatever special state you need. You might have in there techniques like lit, depthwrite etc..
All the "intelligence" is in the shaderlib directory in the *.fxh files. The fx files just stitch together function calls. The HLSL compiler resolves those function calls by inlining the code.
So it is easy to just send someone the shaderlib directory with all the files in there and share your shader code this way.
In the lighting.fxh include file you will have all kinds of lighting models like Ashikhmin-Shirley, Cook-Torrance or Oren-Nayar and obviously Blinn-Phong or just a different BRDF that can mimic a certain material especially good. In normals.fxh you have routines that can fetch normals in different ways and unpack them. Obviously all the DXT5 and DXT1 tricks are in there but also routines that let you fetch height data to generate normals from it. In utility.fxh you have support for different color spaces, special optimizations for different platforms, like special texture fetches etc. In skinning.fxh you have all code related to skinning and animation ... etc.
If you give this library to a graphics programmer he obviously has to put together the shader on his own but he can start looking at what is requested and use different approaches to see what fits best for the job. He does not have to come up with ways on how to generate a normal from height or color data or how to deal with different color spaces.
For a good, efficient and high quality workflow in a game team, this is what you want.