What are Pixel Shaders/Vertex Shaders?

[theprodigalrebel]

Hi...if somebody said, "Explain to me Pixel Shaders/Vertex Shaders like you would to a three-year-old (ok, maybe 18-year-old non-techwiz)" what would be the best way to do it? And what exactly are the functions of the vertex/pixelpipes?

I know it sounds too vague a question....I just can't seem to find an answer that's the right balance of technical-speak and plain english...

TIA

 

[imported_plasmasnake]

Wikipedia states what a "shader" is very nicely: "a program used to determine the final surface properties of an object or image." To elaborate on this, vertex shaders are custom-written programs that affect how vertices (where lines of polygons meet) are aligned and lighted in 3D-space (they replace the transformation and lighting portions of the rendering pipeline, to say it more technically). Pixel shaders allow programmers to directly affect pixels as they are drawn to screen (they replace the multitexturing stage of the rendering pipeline). You can think of it like this: when using an API such as Direct3D, many functions are already provided by the API maintainers to let the programmer display stuff on screen. Vertex/pixel shaders allow more advanced programmers to specify themselves how the stuff should be shown on screen.

As for vertex/pixelpipes, do you mean the hardware pipelines present on graphics cards?

Hope this helps.

 

[Crescent13]

Originally posted by: plasmasnake
Wikipedia states what a "shader" is very nicely: "a program used to determine the final surface properties of an object or image." To elaborate on this, vertex shaders are custom-written programs that affect how vertices (where lines of polygons meet) are aligned and lighted in 3D-space (they replace the transformation and lighting portions of the rendering pipeline, to say it more technically). Pixel shaders allow programmers to directly affect pixels as they are drawn to screen (they replace the multitexturing stage of the rendering pipeline). You can think of it like this: when using an API such as Direct3D, many functions are already provided by the API maintainers to let the programmer display stuff on screen. Vertex/pixel shaders allow more advanced programmers to specify themselves how the stuff should be shown on screen.

As for vertex/pixelpipes, do you mean the hardware pipelines present on graphics cards?

Hope this helps.

wow, nice first post!

I was going to say something like that, so what he said

 

[xtknight]

Basically shaders are an easy way to apply "effects" to a surface.

 

[Fenuxx]

Originally posted by: plasmasnake
Wikipedia states what a "shader" is very nicely: "a program used to determine the final surface properties of an object or image." To elaborate on this, vertex shaders are custom-written programs that affect how vertices (where lines of polygons meet) are aligned and lighted in 3D-space (they replace the transformation and lighting portions of the rendering pipeline, to say it more technically). Pixel shaders allow programmers to directly affect pixels as they are drawn to screen (they replace the multitexturing stage of the rendering pipeline). You can think of it like this: when using an API such as Direct3D, many functions are already provided by the API maintainers to let the programmer display stuff on screen. Vertex/pixel shaders allow more advanced programmers to specify themselves how the stuff should be shown on screen.

As for vertex/pixelpipes, do you mean the hardware pipelines present on graphics cards?

Hope this helps.

Git-R-Done!