Book Image

OpenGL 4 Shading Language Cookbook - Second Edition

By : David Wolff, David A Wolff
Book Image

OpenGL 4 Shading Language Cookbook - Second Edition

By: David Wolff, David A Wolff

Overview of this book

OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) is a programming language used for customizing parts of the OpenGL graphics pipeline that were formerly fixed-function, and are executed directly on the GPU. It provides programmers with unprecedented flexibility for implementing effects and optimizations utilizing the power of modern GPUs. With Version 4, the language has been further refined to provide programmers with greater power and flexibility, with new stages such as tessellation and compute. OpenGL 4 Shading Language Cookbook provides easy-to-follow examples that first walk you through the theory and background behind each technique, and then go on to provide and explain the GLSL and OpenGL code needed to implement it. Beginner level through to advanced techniques are presented including topics such as texturing, screen-space techniques, lighting, shading, tessellation shaders, geometry shaders, compute shaders, and shadows. OpenGL Shading Language 4 Cookbook is a practical guide that takes you from the fundamentals of programming with modern GLSL and OpenGL, through to advanced techniques. The recipes build upon each other and take you quickly from novice to advanced level code. You'll see essential lighting and shading techniques; examples that demonstrate how to make use of textures for a wide variety of effects and as part of other techniques; examples of screen-space techniques including HDR rendering, bloom, and blur; shadowing techniques; tessellation, geometry, and compute shaders; how to use noise effectively; and animation with particle systems. OpenGL Shading Language 4 Cookbook provides examples of modern shading techniques that can be used as a starting point for programmers to expand upon to produce modern, interactive, 3D computer graphics applications.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
OpenGL 4 Shading Language Cookbook Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using the halfway vector for improved performance


As covered in the Implementing per-vertex ambient, diffuse, and specular (ADS) shading recipe in Chapter 2, The Basics of GLSL Shaders, the specular term in the ADS shading equation involves the dot product of the vector of pure reflection (r), and the direction towards the viewer (v).

In order to evaluate the above equation, we need to find the vector of pure reflection (r), which is the reflection of the vector towards the light source (s) about the normal vector (n).

Note

This equation is implemented by the GLSL function: reflect.

The above equation requires a dot product, an addition, and a couple of multiplication operations. We can gain a slight improvement in the efficiency of the specular calculation by making use of the following observation. When v is aligned with r, the normal vector (n) must be halfway between v and s.

Let's define the halfway vector (h) as the vector that is halfway between v and s, where h is normalized after the...