Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 10

Chapter 10

The Geometry Shader

The geometry shader stage is an optional stage that sits between the vertex and pixel shader stages. While the vertex shader inputs vertices, the geometry shader inputs entire primitives. For example, if we were drawing triangle lists, then the geometry shader program would be executed for each triangle T in the list:

for(UINT i = 0; i < numTriangles; ++i)

        OutputPrimitiveList = GeometryShader( T[i].vertexList );

Notice the three vertices of each triangle are input into the geometry shader. The main advantage of the geometry shader is that it can create or destroy geometry. For example, the input primitive can be expanded into one or more other primitives, or the geometry shader can choose not to output ...