Introduction

Shaders were first added into OpenGL in Version 2.0, introducing programmability into the formerly fixed-function OpenGL pipeline. Shaders give us the power to implement alternative rendering algorithms and a greater degree of flexibility in the implementation of those techniques. With shaders, we can run custom code directly on the GPU, providing us with the opportunity to leverage the high degree of parallelism available with modern GPUs.

Shaders are implemented using the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL). The GLSL is syntactically similar to C, which should make it easier for experienced OpenGL programmers to learn. Due to the nature of this text, I won't present a thorough introduction to GLSL here. Instead, if you're new to GLSL, reading through these recipes should help you to learn the language by example. If you are already comfortable with GLSL, but don't have experience with Version 4.x, you'll see how to implement these techniques utilizing the newer API. However, before...