Preface

If you are still in the old fixed pipeline days and your OpenGL knowledge is a little bit rusty, or if you want to jump from OpenGL|ES to a more complete and modern version of OpenGL, then this book is for you. Inside the pages of this book, you will find the details of the most recent OpenGL Shading Language Version: 4.3.

This book has been written looking forward in the OpenGL specification. No old functionalities or deprecated code will be found in this book, just the plain 4.3 Version.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, The Graphics Rendering Pipeline, starts with a brief introduction to the rendering pipeline and moves on to give an overview of the programmable stages.

Chapter 2, GLSL Basics, covers language basics, types, vector operations, flow control, preprocessor, and shader inputs and outputs.

Chapter 3, Vertex Shaders, looks at the vertex programmable stage, uniform variables and basic lighting, and vertex shader examples.

Chapter 4, Fragment Shaders, looks at the execution model, inputs and outputs, and examples.

Chapter 5, Geometry Shaders, looks at geometry shader structure, interface blocks, and examples.

Chapter 6, Compute Shaders, covers the execution model, GPGPU basics, render to texture, and basic raw computations.

What you need for this book

In order to run the samples from this book, you will need a text editor and a C/C++ compiler. For the text editor, a free editor such as Notepad++ or SciTE could be used, and for the C/C++ compiler, GCC/G++, or Visual Studio (the Express version is free) are the best choices. As we are addressing the latest OpenGL version, a graphics card that supports at least OpenGL 4.3 will be needed.

Who this book is for

This book is for people who have some experience or basic knowledge in computer graphics and who want to upgrade their knowledge to the latest OpenGL version. It is also for people who want to take the jump from the fixed pipeline to the programmable pipeline.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The buffer keyword denotes the type of the interface block."

A block of code is set as follows:

layout(std430, binding = 0) buffer InputBufferA{float inA[];};
layout(std430, binding = 1) buffer InputBufferB{float inB[];};
layout(std430, binding=2) buffer OutputBuffer{float outBuffer[];};

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

layout(std430, binding = 0) buffer InputBufferA{float inA[];};
layout(std430, binding = 1) buffer InputBufferB{float inB[];};
layout(std430, binding=2) buffer OutputBuffer{float outBuffer[];};

New terms and important words are shown in bold.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Downloading the color images of this book

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Errata

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Questions

You can contact us at <[email protected]> if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.