I do actually suggest the shader route. If you know how to write shaders, it should actually be pretty easy to do. I've found the official shader workshops to be very helpful and fairly simple (especially the first 4 parts, which are the most important). HLSL (the shader language) certainly has differences from Lite-C, but a lot of similarities as well, and some conveniences that (once you learn them) you'll wish Lite-C had.