If you're curious about what else is out there, you can read about the various stages in the graphics pipeline on the OpenGL Wiki. Note: This article is exclusively about fragment shaders. (There are a bunch of shading languages out there for different platforms, but since they're all adapted to run on the GPU, they're all very similar.) Don't worry, you don't have to go out and learn a completely new language we will be using GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language) which is a C-like language.
Shaders are written in a special shading language. These programs are called shaders because they're often used to control lighting and shading effects, but there's no reason they can't handle other special effects. So What is a Shader?Ī shader is simply a program that runs in the graphics pipeline and tells the computer how to render each pixel. This is a general guide, so what you learn here will apply to anything that can run shaders. I'll focus more on the basics of writing and understanding shader code, so you can easily tweak, combine, or write your own from scratch!
There are lots of code samples out there that show you how to create incredible effects, but offer little or no explanation. Shader programming sometimes comes off as an enigmatic black magic and is often misunderstood. A scene in Minecraft, before and after applying a few shaders. Virtually every modern graphics simulation you see is powered in some way by code written for the GPU, from the realistic lighting effects in cutting edge AAA games to 2D post-processing effects and fluid simulations. It's a kind of programming that requires a different mindset, but unlocking its potential is worth the initial trouble. Learning to write graphics shaders is learning to leverage the power of the GPU, with its thousands of cores all running in parallel.
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