5 - Shader Setup in DirectX

Abstract

This chapter discusses the shader setup in Direct X that involves various steps from creating a Direct3D (D3D) device to rendering one's data. The interface through which one communicates with the hardware (or software emulation) is the D3D device interface. When one creates a device using the interface's CreateDevice() function, one specifies two important settings for shader usage. The first is the type of device—hardware, software, or reference rasterizer. Vertex elements are the parts that make up the vertex data one is interested in rendering. Creating a vertex shader interface declaration is an important step involved in the process that lets the driver know the format of the data. For creating a vertex buffer, the most common possible format to start with is the one that mimics a typical format supported in previous OpenGL and Direct3D implementations, that of a simple untransformed vertex that contains color and normal data. Further, the steps involved in the process are creating well-formed vertex data, creating and using pixel and vertex shaders, and assembling vertex and pixel shaders.