Shader

A shader is a program that computes part of an image-rendering process, often on a graphics processing unit. It can transform geometry, calculate surface appearance, or process pixels.

Vertex shader: A programmable graphics stage that transforms each vertex and can pass data to later stages. It commonly transforms object coordinates into clip-space positions before rasterization.
Coordinate transformation: A mathematical mapping that expresses points or vectors in a different coordinate system. Vertex shaders use transformations to move geometry from object space toward screen space.
Physically based rendering: A rendering approach that uses material and lighting models designed to approximate physical behavior. Shaders implement its material responses and lighting calculations in real-time renderers.
Fixed-function pipeline: A graphics pipeline whose operations are largely predetermined by hardware rather than supplied as custom programs. It contrasts with programmable shader stages, which let applications define rendering calculations.
Fragment shader: A programmable graphics stage that computes values for fragments, often including their final colors. It commonly combines material, texture, and lighting data to determine surface appearance.
Texture mapping: A technique for assigning image data to points on a three-dimensional surface. Shaders commonly sample textures to add color, detail, or material information to surfaces.
Deferred shading: A rendering technique that stores surface attributes before applying lighting in a later pass. Its separate geometry and lighting passes use shaders for different stages of the workflow.
OpenGL Shading Language: A C-like language used to write shaders for the OpenGL graphics API. It is one established language for expressing vertex, fragment, and other shaders.
Geometry shader: A graphics stage that processes complete primitives and can emit or discard geometry. It can expand or alter primitives after vertex processing and before rasterization.
Texture sampling: The process of retrieving values from a texture at specified coordinates, often with filtering. Fragment shaders use sampled values to calculate surface colors and other properties.

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