GDX205 Building shaders

In this unit, you will study the history and evolution of shaders in video games, explore some of the key advances made in shader graphics and become familiar with some of the industry pioneers who have influenced and contributed to the technology commonly used by most popular game engines today. You will look back to the introduction of hardware acceleration, the competing Open GL and Direct X APIs and the resulting GPU wars of the late 90’s that would ultimately shape the landscape in computer graphics for the next two decades.

You will develop the skills and knowledge to design and create custom shaders in a game engine using popular tools and techniques, you will examine the basic structure of a shader script and how todays modern shaders can be easily assembled and modified in a game engine using visual editing systems.

By the end of this subject you will understand the history and evolution of shader technology and how to develop and modify basic shader materials through practical, practise based exercises.