Chapter 2 The Graphics Rendering Pipeline

Application -> Geometry Processing -> Rasterization -> Pixel Processing

Application Stage

The developer has full control to determine the implementation. For example, an application stage algorithm or setting could decrease the number of triangles to be rendered. At the end of application stage, the geometry to be rendered is fed to the geometry processing stage. The rendering primitives: points, lines, triangles.

To increase performance, the stage is often executed in parallel on several processor cores.

One process commonly implemented in this stage is collision detection, or handle user input. Acceleration algorithm, such as particular culling algorithms are also implmented here.

Geometry Processing

Vertex Shading -> Projection -> Clipping -> Screen Mapping

(1) Vertex Shading : compute the position for a vertex and evaluate custom vertex output data.