OpenGL Insights

An Introduction to Tessellation

Shaders

Philip Rideout and Dirk Van Gelder

6.1 Introduction

Tessellation shaders open new doors for real-time graphics programming. GPU-

based tessellation was possible in the past only through trickery, relying on multiple

passes and misappropriation of existing shader units.

OpenGL 4.0 finally provides first-class support for GPU tessellation, but the new

shading stages can seem nonintuitive at first. This chapter explains the distinct roles

of those stages in the new pipeline and gives an overview of some common rendering

techniques that leverage them.

GPUs tend to be better at “ streamable” amplification; rather than storing ...