Abstract: Ubershaders may be used in a graphics development environment as an efficiency tool because many options and properties may be captured in a single shader program. Each selectable option of property in the shader code may be tagged with an attribute to indicate the presence of the selection. The single shader program embodying the many selectable options and properties may be compiled to an intermediate version that also embodies the many options and properties, along with at least remnants of the tagging attributes. Upon a request for executable code including indications of the desired selectable options or properties, generation of the executable code may proceed such that it includes only the desire selectable options and properties and not other selectable options and properties embodied in the source code.

Abstract: An improved tessellation graphics pipeline that obviates that use of early stage vertex shaders and hull shaders and allows greater efficiency and flexibility. Embodiments provide a graphics pipeline beginning with a tessellator that may obtain tessellation factors in any manner such as reading from a memory of factors provided by a developer or computing the factors using a compute kernel. In some embodiments, a single vertex shader may follow the tessellator and perform all the necessary vertex shading for the pipeline. Furthermore, in some embodiments, a compute kernel is used to generate the tessellation factors. The compute kernel provides flexibility that allows its employment for some graphic portions and not others. In addition, the streamlined pipeline facilitates the efficient use of scaling to determine tessellation factors for the same graphic portion at different camera distances or desired levels of replication of the mathematical model.

Abstract: Ubershaders may be used in a graphics development environment as an efficiency tool because many options and properties may be captured in a single shader program. Each selectable option of property in the shader code may be tagged with an attribute to indicate the presence of the selection. The single shader program embodying the many selectable options and properties may be compiled to an intermediate version that also embodies the many options and properties, along with at least remnants of the tagging attributes. Upon a request for executable code including indications of the desired selectable options or properties, generation of the executable code may proceed such that it includes only the desire selectable options and properties and not other selectable options and properties embodied in the source code.