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Tim Heuer discusses two methods of compiling pixel shaders in Silverlight - by using DirectX Libraries and by using a build task.

One option you can do is to use a pre-build command for your project in combination with the DirectX SDK. What you really need out of the DirectX SDK is a tool called fxc.exe.  This is a compiler for the HLSL code for the pixel shader code you write.  The download is 500MB.  Yeah, big.  Once you have it installed you can put a pre-build command on your Visual Studio project.

In the first part of this series on advanced rendering techniques ( Fluid Dymamics in Silverlight), I talked about generating writeableBitmaps, using a source image as a brush, and a very basic blur and fade technique. For this tutorial, we’re going to start with a base project and progressively improve it to support line and graphic rendering, dynamic coloring, a much better blur and fade implementation, and finally, use the dynamic writeableBitmap as the distortion input for a Pixel Shader. So get ready, we have a ton of ground to cover.

The intensity of the scratches and the noise is controlled with the Sliders. The shader could be disabled with the "Bypass" checkbox and it's also possible to load a WMV clip with the "Load" Button.

1. Introduction

Silverlight 3 is now fact, and it introduces a lot of new functionalities. One of the things that we have been missing in Silverlight 2 was the element effects. If you want to make your elements more attractive then you need to write your own custom effects. Of course there are additional libraries (such as Silverlight.FX), which offer a great number of effects and animations. Fortunately, in Silverlight 3 such effects have been implemented.

In this article I will develop a simple Silverlight Slide Show using Pixel Shader effects. 

René Schulte explains in detail pixel shaders and the implementation of edge detection post processing effect.

Silverlight pixel shaders could be written in HLSL and compiled with the DirectX shader compiler fxc. The produced binary file is then loaded with the Silverlight 3 PixelShader class. Quite easy huh? I must admit that I'm not a complete newbie to shader development. I even wrote some shaders with Shader Model 1.1 in the assembler shading language a few years ago, but haven't done it a while.
For Silverlight 3 I've implemented an edge detection post processing effect. It's a parametric pixel shader, which performs a common image processing technique called convolution.

Gavin Wignall has posted an example that shows off 6 transitional effects using the new pixel shader ability in Silverlight 3.

By standard, Blend 3 currently only features 2 pixel shading effects which are Blur and Shadow. The 6 new effects I show off above are:

• Directional Blur Effect
• Pixelate Effect
• Pinch Effect
• Ripple Effect
• Swirl Effect
• Zoom Blur Effect

By standard, Blend 3 currently only features 2 pixel shading effects which are Blur and Shadow. The 6 new effects I show off above are:

• Directional Blur Effect
• Pixelate Effect
• Pinch Effect
• Ripple Effect
• Swirl Effect
• Zoom Blur Effect

Matt Casto posted about one cool new feature the became available with Silverlight 3 - pixel shaders, also known as shader effects.

The two most common effects – drop shadow and blur – are included with Silverlight. Its easy to add these effects to any UIElement.

Another source of pixel shader HLSL code may be found on Rakesh’s blog here. I’m not sure that any of those work in Silverlight, but it’s worth a try, or is at least good to learn from.