Book Image

GLSL Essentials

By : Jacobo Rodriguez
Book Image

GLSL Essentials

By: Jacobo Rodriguez

Overview of this book

Shader programming has been the largest revolution in graphics programming. OpenGL Shading Language (abbreviated: GLSL or GLslang), is a high-level shading language based on the syntax of the C programming language.With GLSL you can execute code on your GPU (aka graphics card). More sophisticated effects can be achieved with this technique.Therefore, knowing how OpenGL works and how each shader type interacts with each other, as well as how they are integrated into the system, is imperative for graphic programmers. This knowledge is crucial in order to be familiar with the mechanisms for rendering 3D objects. GLSL Essentials is the only book on the market that teaches you about shaders from the very beginning. It shows you how graphics programming has evolved, in order to understand why you need each stage in the Graphics Rendering Pipeline, and how to manage it in a simple but concise way. This book explains how shaders work in a step-by-step manner, with an explanation of how they interact with the application assets at each stage. This book will take you through the graphics pipeline and will describe each section in an interactive and clear way. You will learn how the OpenGL state machine works and all its relevant stages. Vertex shaders, fragment shaders, and geometry shaders will be covered, as well some use cases and an introduction to the math needed for lighting algorithms or transforms. Generic GPU programming (GPGPU) will also be covered. After reading GLSL Essentials you will be ready to generate any rendering effect you need.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Examples


In the following pages I'm going to present some examples, from the most basic one to a complex lighting shader.

Solid color mesh

The first one is a very simple shader that writes the mesh in a solid color, received using a uniform variable:

#version 430
#debug(on)
#optimize(off)
uniform vec4 SolidColor;
out vec4 FBColor;

void main()
{
  FBColor= SolidColor;
}

Using a half red color stored in the SolidColor uniform variable, over a cylinder mesh, we get the following rendering:

Using only uniforms as input we can't do much more than this, so I'll colorize the cylinder using its own vertices' positions.

Interpolated colored mesh

First, in the vertex shader, set up an interpolator of vec3 type and place the xyz of the position attribute there. Then, use the following fragment shader:

#version 430
#pragma debug(on)
#pragma optimize(off)

uniform vec4 SolidColor;
in vec3 InterpolatedPosition;

out vec4 FBColor;
void main()
{
  FBColor = vec4(InterpolatedPosition, 1.0);
}

The following is the...