Actually, the reality is exactly how I mentioned it, because the shader workshop holds you hand and takes you step-by-step through writing a normal mapping shader. Want to extend that with dynamic lights? The manual gives you a function you can copy into your code.

Except for a few exceptional cases, shaders don't take much time at all. I do everything in KarBOOM, and the shaders have had very little impact on development -- only a few days altogether, including rewrites as my needs change, and I've been working on this since September last year (although with some interference from university).

Between the shader workshops, the manual's great examples, and the way materials work and can be strung together in Gamestudio, it truly is very easy to learn to write shaders -- more so than in other engines.

Unity provides automatic dynamic lighting, for example, and because of that shaders have to be written in an unusual way, and the result uses unnecessary passes (although I don't know how it works with the new deferred renderer). It provides a global shadow system, but last I checked that was just CSM, which I've written a short tutorial for on my website.

I'm not suggesting teams need shader programmers, I'm saying if you have a Lite-C programmer with Commercial or Pro, you should already have a shader programmer.

Jibb