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

Chapter 10. Geometry Shaders

Chapter Objectives

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

• Create and use geometry shaders to further process geometry within the OpenGL pipeline.

• Create additional geometric primitives using a geometry shader.

• Use geometry shaders in combination with transform feedback to generate multiple streams of geometric data.

• Render to multiple viewports in a single rendering pass.

In this chapter, we introduce another vertex processing stage: the geometry shader. The geometry shader sits logically right before primitive assembly and fragment shading. It receives as its input complete primitives as a collection of vertices, and these inputs are represented as arrays. Typically, the inputs are ...