XNA Game Studio 4.0 Programming: Developing for Windows

Chapter 6. Built-In Shader Effects

All modern games are rendered using a variety of shader effects, and the XNA Game Studio runtime comes with several built in effects. In this chapter you’ll learn about them, including:

• BasicEffect

• The built in effect interfaces

• DualTextureEffect

• AlphaTestEffect

• EnvironmentMapEffect

• SkinnedEffect

You’ve actually used built-in effects for the rendering you’ve done up until now, even if you didn’t realize it! In Chapter 4, “Introduction to 3D Graphics,” you learned about pixel shaders and vertex shaders, which are combined into an effect. Although an effect doesn’t have to have both a vertex shader and a pixel shader, you see the term effect used interchangeably throughout this book for the word ...