Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders

When newer graphics cards started offering a programming interface to their graphics-processing unit (GPU), there was a fundamental change from fixed-function to programmable graphics hardware. This fundamental change offers a whole new level of opportunities for real-time graphics programmers. Using shaders not only allows you to create unique games and graphics, but it allows you to be far more creative.

Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders uses a "cookbook" approach to teach beginning to intermediate graphics and game programmers to program shaders in the High-Level Shading Language (HLSL), the primary real-time shading language used in recent game development. The book uses a wide range of examples (over 60) to teach various techniques, ranging from simple real-time lighting to advanced, cutting-edge rendering. The book is broken into eight parts covering introductory material, shadows, high dynamic range lighting, lighting algorithms, vertex texturing, projective texture mapping, environment cube mapping, and advanced reflectance algorithms (Cook-Torrance, Oren-Nayar,Ward, and Ashikhmin-Shirley).

The coverage starts from the beginning, so no existing knowledge of shader programming is required. The book does assume a basic understanding of the math typically used in a game engine and an intermediate understanding of the Direct3D API. This is the one resource developers need to learn practical, current techniques for programming shaders for next-generation games and graphics!

Features

• Teaches programmers how to write and compile vertex and pixel shaders in HLSL with more than 60 example programs
• Leads programmers from the basics of how to install the shader debugger to advanced rendering
• Details how to implement per-pixel lighting algorithms (Blinn-Phong, Phong, Cook-Torrance, Oren-Nayar,Ward, and Ashikhmin-Shirley reflectance models) and shadow techniques on recent hardware
• Includes an appendix featuring vs_3_0 and ps_3_0 assembly shader programming with more than a dozen example programs

On the CD!

• All source code for the example programs in each chapter in HLSL
• The latest Microsoft* DirectX 9 SDK
• Assembly Shader examples for vs_3_0 and ps_3_0
• All the figures from the book

System Requirements

DirectX 9 System Development Kit (SDK); Windows XP Professional with the newest service pack (Windows XP Home does not support debug runtimes); At least Visual C++.NET 2003 (the DirectX shader debugger requires this); 512MB of RAM minimum; 500MB of free space on your hard drive minimum; Pentium IV/ATHLON with more than 1.5 GHZ, and a graphics card that supports pixel shader Version 2 or 3. The most important requirement is the graphics card. To receive real-time visual feedback from the examples, your graphics card should support pixel shader Version 2 at the least. The examples in Chapters 26 and 27 require a graphics card that supports pixel shader Version 3. If you do not have such a graphics card, the DirectX reference rasterizer (REF) will take over, and the examples will run very slowly, but most of them will run fast enough for you to see what is going on. Because the REF will be installed only with the DirectX 9 SDK (or newer), the SDK must always be installed first to test the example programs.