3. The Graphics Pipeline
Claudia Doppioslash1Â
(1)Liverpool, Merseyside, UK
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This chapter describes every step in the execution of shaders, including how they hook into the graphics pipeline.
By graphics pipeline we intend the steps needed to render a 3D scene into a 2D screen. As mentioned in the first chapter, shader execution is composed of many steps. Some of those steps are implemented completely in hardware in the GPU, and they are fixed, while others are programmable through shaders. This is because the modern GPU has evolved around the graphics pipeline.
3D renderers
were first implemented completely ...