The Cg Tutorial: The Definitive Guide to Programmable Real-Time Graphics

Preface

Once upon a time, real-time computer graphics was all about vertices, triangles, and pixels. In fact, it still is. However, the level at which a programmer controls the processing and appearance of these graphics primitives has advanced considerably. Until a few years ago, programmers had to rely on the CPU to process all the transformation and rasterization algorithms needed to produce computer-generated images. Over time, hardware engineers executed these algorithms via specialized, high-performance 3D graphics hardware. Rather than implement the algorithms directly, programmers learned to access the hardware-provided graphics functionality through standard 3D programming interfaces, such as OpenGL (developed by Silicon Graphics [SGI]) ...