HLSL
From Tech Artists Wiki
The High Level Shader Language or High Level Shading Language (HLSL) is a proprietary shading language developed by Microsoft for use with the Microsoft Direct3D API. It is analogous to the GLSL shading language used with the OpenGL standard. It is very similar to the NVIDIA CgFX shading language, as it was developed alongside it.
HLSL programs come in three forms, vertex shaders, geometry shaders, and pixel (or fragment) shaders. A vertex shader is executed for each vertex that is submitted by the application, and is primarily responsible for transforming the vertex from object space to view space, generating texture coordinates, and calculating lighting coefficents such as the vertex's tangent, binormal and normal vectors. When a group of vertices (normally 3, to form a triangle) come through the vertex shader, their output position is interpolated to form pixels within its area, this process is known as rasterisation. Each of these pixels comes through the pixel shader, whereby the resultant screen colour is calculated.
Please see the Wikipedia article on HLSL, which includes specs for different shader models.
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Categories: Shaders | HLSL | Rendering
