As I mentioned earlier, we have to convert 3D objects that are made up of vertices and textures and represent them on a 2D screen as pixels on the screen. This is done with what is called a render pipeline. The following diagram explains the steps involved:
A pipeline is simply a series of steps that are carried out one after the other to achieve a certain objective. The stages that are highlighted in the orange boxes (or lightly shaded boxes, if you're reading a black and white copy of this book) in the preceding diagram are fixed, meaning that you cannot modify how the data in the stages is processed. The stages in the blue or darker boxes are programmable stages, meaning that you can write special programs to modify the output. The preceding diagram shows a basic pipeline, which includes the minimum stages we need to complete to render objects. There...
