A shading language on graphics hardware: the pixelflow shading system

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/280814.280857

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https://doi.org/10.1145/280814.280857
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/41683

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UMBC College of Engineering and Information Technology Dean's Office
UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department

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Author/Creator ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4209-6103

Date

1998-07-24

Type of Work

conference papers and proceedings
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Citation of Original Publication

Olano, Marc, and Anselmo Lastra. “A Shading Language on Graphics Hardware: The Pixelflow Shading System.” Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, SIGGRAPH ’98, July 24, 1998, 159–68. https://doi.org/10.1145/280814.280857.

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Subjects

UMBC Ebiquity Research Group

Abstract

Over the years, there have been two main branches of computergraphics image-synthesis research; one focused on interactivity,the other on image quality. Procedural shading is a powerful tool,commonly used for creating high-quality images and productionanimation. A key aspect of most procedural shading is the use ofa shading language, which allows a high-level description of thecolor and shading of each surface. However, shading languageshave been beyond the capabilities of the interactive graphicshardware community. We have created a parallel graphics multicomputer, PixelFlow, that can render images at 30 frames persecond using a shading language. This is the first system to beable to support a shading language in real-time. In this paper, wedescribe some of the techniques that make this possible.