Practice shader vocabulary: vertex shaders, fragment shaders, expensive shaders, compute shaders, shader compilation, and precision issues.
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1 / 5
The graphics pipeline first runs a ___ shader to transform each point of a mesh into screen space.
A vertex shader runs once per vertex in a mesh. Its primary job is to transform vertex positions from model space to clip space using the MVP (Model-View-Projection) matrix, and to pass interpolated data (UVs, normals) to the fragment shader.
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After vertex processing the ___ shader calculates the final colour for every screen pixel.
A fragment shader (pixel shader in DirectX terminology) runs once per screen fragment after rasterization. It computes the final colour using textures, lighting calculations, and other material properties.
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A profiler shows the water shader is computationally ___. What does this mean for frame rate?
A computationally expensive shader consumes a large number of GPU cycles per pixel or vertex — for example, a water shader with multiple texture samples, FFT waves, and subsurface scattering can easily drop frame rates.
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The team moved the particle simulation from the fragment stage to a ___ shader for better GPU utilisation.
Compute shaders run general-purpose programs on the GPU without being tied to rendering pipeline stages. They are ideal for particle simulations, physics, post-processing, and any task benefiting from massively parallel execution.
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The player reports a stutter when entering a new area. Investigation reveals ___ compilation is happening at runtime.
Shader compilation stutter occurs when the GPU compiles a shader program the first time it is used during gameplay. The fix is to pre-compile (warm up) shaders during loading or to use pre-compiled shader caches (PSO caches in modern APIs).