Grafikkrørverk

Grafikkrørverk, often translated as graphics pipeline, refers to the series of processing steps a graphics card or GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) performs to render a 3D scene into a 2D image displayed on a screen. This process begins with geometric data representing the objects in a scene, such as vertices and polygons.

The first stage typically involves the vertex shader, which manipulates these vertices, transforming them from their original 3D coordinates into screen space. This can include operations like translation, rotation, and scaling. Following this is the rasterization stage, where the 2D screen coordinates are used to determine which pixels on the screen are covered by the geometric primitives.

Next, the pixel shader (or fragment shader) is applied. This stage determines the color of each individual pixel. It can involve complex calculations, sampling textures, applying lighting effects, and other visual enhancements. After the pixel shader, several fixed-function stages often occur, such as depth testing, where pixels are discarded if they are behind other objects, and blending, which allows for transparency effects. Finally, the rendered image is written to a frame buffer, which is then displayed on the monitor. Each stage in the graphics pipeline can be customized through shaders, allowing for a vast range of visual effects and rendering techniques.