Welcome to the latest volume of ShaderX! This all-new collection is packed with insightful new techniques, innovative approaches to common problems, and practical tools and tricks that will help you in all areas of shader programming. All of the articles evolved from the work and experiences of industry pros, and all of the sections were edited by shader programming experts. With the rapid advances in DirectX, OpenGL, and graphics cards, vertex and pixel shaders are becoming more widely used in high-end graphics and game development. The challenges of mastering these techniques can be daunting for new programmers, but with this comprehensive collection of ready-to-use techniques, they'll get up to speed quickly. And for the more experienced programmers, they'll find insights and tricks that will improve their efficiency and prevent redundancy. If you are involved in shader programming, this is a must-have reference for your collection.

Features

• Section 1 Geometry Manipulation: Topology on the GPU; Rendering Complex Formulas; Mesh Object Deforming Using HLSL; Morphing between Two Different Objects; Silhouette Geometry Shaders; GLSL Real-Time Shader Development
• Section 2 Rendering Techniques: Reflections from Bumpy Surfaces; Massively Parallel Particle Systems on the GPU; Self-Shadowing; Batching via Texture Atlases; Real-Time Texture- Space Skin Rendering; Texture Motion Blur; Animation and Display of Water; Hair Rendering and Shading
• Section 3 Software Shaders and Shader Programming Tips: Optimizing Dx9 Vertex Shaders for Software Vertex Processing; Software Shaders and DirectX DLL Implementation; Tactical Path-Finding Using Stochastic Maps on the GPUFX Composer 1.5–Standardization
• Section 4 Image Space: A Steerable Streak Filter; Adaptive Glare; Color Grading; Improved Depth of Field Rendering; Lighting Precomputation Using the Relighting Map; Shaderey– NPR Style Rendering
• Section 5 Shadows: Poisson Shadow Blur; Fractional-Disk Soft Shadows; Fake Soft Shadows Using Precomputed Visibility Distance Functions; Efficient Omnidirectional Shadow Maps
• Section 6 3D Engine Design: An Extensible Direct3D Resource Management System; Integrating Shaders into the Vision Rendering Engine; Effect Parameters Manipulation Framework; Shader Visualization Systems for the Art Pipeline; Drawing a Crowd
• Section 7 Tools Environmental Effects: In-Depth Performance Analyses of DirectX9 Shading Hardware Concerning Pixel Shader and Texture Performance; Shaderbreaker; Generating Shaders from HLSL Fragments
• Section 8 Environmental Effects: Light Shaft Rendering; Rendering Rainbows; Analytic Model for Daylight with Shaders; Volumetric Clouds

On the CD

The CD-ROM contains the example programs with source code accompanying the majority of chapters, as well as useful demos, and the latest Microsoft® DirectX 9 System Development Kit (SDK).

SECTION EDITORS

Dean Calver
Willem H. de Boer
Tom Forsyth
Eric Haines
Dean Macri
Jason L. Mitchell
Nicolas Thibieroz

CONTRIBUTORS

Wessam Bahnassi Homam Bahnassi Ron Barbosa Florian Born Zoe Brawley Clint S. Brewer Ronny Burkersroda Dean Calver Nicolas Capens Kwok-Hung Choy Willem H. de Boer Joachim Diepstraten Mike Eißele Dag Frommhold David R. Gosselin Shawn Hargreaves

O´dell Hicks Daniel Horowitz Gary King Christian Kleinhuis Kent F. Knox Jesse Laeuchli Stefano Lanza Lutz Latta Chi-Sing Leung Bill Licea-Kane Jörn Loviscach Khanh Phong Ly Chris Maughan Jason L. Mitchell Henning Mortveit William Newhall

Pedro V. Sander Thorsten Scheuermann Natalya Tatarchuk Tiago Sousa Marco Spörl Vlad Stamate Michal Valient Terry Welsh Matthias Wloka Tien-Tsin Wong Markus Nuebel Chris Oat Magnus Österlind Aras Pranckevicius

Wolfgang F. Engel is a Senior Graphics Programmer in the core technology group at Rockstar San Diego. He is the editor of the ShaderX book series and the author of Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders. Wolfgang is a frequent speaker at conferences throughout the world and publishes articles in a variety of journals and on several websites. He is also a speaker at the Game Developer's Conference in March 2007, and is a Microsoft DirectX MVP.