Interactive multi-pass programmable shading

Programmable shading is a common technique for production animation, but interactive programmable shading is not yet widely available. We support interactive programmable shading on virtually any 3D graphics hardware using a scene graph library on top of OpenGL. We treat the OpenGL architecture as a general SIMD computer, and translate the high-level shading description into OpenGL rendering passes. While our system uses OpenGL, the techniques described are applicable to any retained mode interface with appropriate extension mechanisms and hardware API with provisions for recirculating data through the graphics pipeline. We present two demonstrations of the method. The first is a constrained shading language that runs on graphics hardware

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: SIGGRAPH
• Authors: Mark S. Peercy, Marc Olano, John Airey, P. Jeffrey Ungar
• Keywords: Computer Graphics, Graphics Hardware, Interactive Programmable Shading, Programmable Shading, SIGGRAPH 2000