Direct3D Rendering Cookbook

Filling the G-Buffer

A geometry buffer or G-Buffer is a collection of one or more textures that contain attributes of the current frame necessary to render the final scene at a later stage, usually within screen space. The attributes stored in the G-Buffer might consist of data, such as position, normal vectors, diffuse, and other material properties.

This recipe prepares a G-Buffer that collects the information needed for a classic deferred rendering technique (or deferred shading); however, the approach can be easily extended to cache information for any deferred technique.

Getting ready

We will need a scene with a number of objects and varying materials. We will use the MeshRenderer class and vertex structure from the Adding surface detail with ...