OpenGL® Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL®, Version 4.5 with SPIR-V, Ninth Edition

Chapter 9. Tessellation Shaders

Chapter Objectives

After reading this chapter, you’ll be able to do the following:

• Understand the differences between tessellation and vertex shaders.

• Identify the phases of processing that occur when using tessellation shaders.

• Recognize the various tessellation domains and know which one best matches the type of geometry you need to generate.

• Initialize data and draw using the patch geometric primitive.

This chapter introduces OpenGL’s tessellation shader stages. It has the following major sections:

• “Tessellation Shaders” provides an overview of how tessellation shaders work in OpenGL.

• “Tessellation Patches” introduces tessellation’s rendering primitive, the patch.

• “Tessellation Control Shaders ...