Graphics Pipeline Hub
Hub card — maps each graphics pipeline stage to the atomic concept cards covering it. This card holds no derivations itself, just the map.
Stage 1: Vertex Shading
Transform each vertex from object space to clip space.
- Matrix composition order (SRT) — how the Model matrix is built (TRS ordering)
- Coordinate spaces (rendering pipeline) — World → Camera (View_Mat) → Clip (Proj_Mat)
Stage 2: Vertex Post-Processing
Clip space → screen space → pixel space.
- Coordinate spaces (rendering pipeline) — perspective divide (Clip→Screen) and viewport transform (Screen→Pixel)
- Clipping — cutting triangles against the frustum in clip space, before the divide
Stage 3: Primitive Assembly / Culling
Vertices are grouped into triangles; triangles facing away from the camera are discarded before any per-pixel work happens.
- Back-face culling — dot-product method and winding-order method
Stage 4: Rasterization
Determine which pixels each surviving triangle covers, and interpolate per-pixel attributes.
- Rasterization — scanline vs bounding-box/barycentric coverage tests
- Barycentric interpolation — the weights themselves: geometric meaning, coverage test, attribute interpolation
- Perspective-correct interpolation — why naive screen-space lerp of attributes is wrong, and the divide-by-w fix
Stage 5: Fragment Shading
Per-pixel color computation: sampling textures, applying materials, computing lighting.
- UV mapping — how surface points map to texture coordinates
- Texture sampling — sample-then-interpolate vs interpolate-then-sample, and why order matters
- Lighting — Lambert diffuse, Phong/Blinn-Phong reflection, Gouraud vs Phong shading
- Material properties — Base Color, Metallic, Roughness, Normal Map, Diffuse Lighting, and the rest of the PBR parameter set
Stage 6: Per-Fragment Operations
After a fragment’s color is computed, decide whether and how it actually reaches the framebuffer.
- Depth testing (Z-buffer) — occlusion via per-pixel depth comparison
- Stencil testing, alpha blending — not yet carded