Learning DirectX 12 – Lesson 4 – Textures

DirectX 12 Logo

DirectX 12 – Lesson 4

In this lesson, you learn how to load textures into your DirectX 12 powered applications. You learn how to use the compute pipeline to generate mipmaps for textures. You also learn about texture samplers and how to specify a texture sampler in the root signature. A texture sampler is used to control how the texels are read in a shader.

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Learning DirectX 12 – Lesson 3 – Framework

DirectX 12

DirectX 12 – Lesson 3

In this tutorial, you will be introduced to several classes that will help you to create a robust and flexible framework for building DirectX 12 applications. Some of the problems that are solved with the classes introduced in this lesson are managing CPU descriptors, copying CPU descriptors to GPU visible descriptor heaps, managing resource state across multiple threads, and uploading dynamic buffer data to the GPU. To automatically manage the state and descriptors for resources, a custom command list class is also provided.

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Learning DirectX 12 – Lesson 2 – Rendering

DirectX 12

DirectX 12 – Lesson 2

This is the second lesson in a series of lessons to teach you how to create a DirectX 12 powered application from scratch. In this lesson, vertex and index data is uploaded to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) for rendering. Basic vertex and pixel shaders are described and how to create a Pipeline State Object (PSO) that utilizes those shaders is also described. A root signature defines the parameters that are used by the stages of the rendering pipeline. In this lesson a simple root signature is created that defines a single constant buffer that contains the Model-View-Projection (MVP) matrix that is used to rotate a model in the scene.

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Learning DirectX 12 – Lesson 1 – Initialize DirectX 12

DirectX 12

DirectX 12

This is the first lesson in a series of lessons to teach you how to create a DirectX 12 application from scratch. In this lesson, you will learn how to query for DirectX 12 capable display adapters that are available, create a DirectX 12 device, create a swap-chain, and you will also learn how to present the swap chain back buffer to the screen. In this lesson, you will also create a command queue and a command list and learn how to synchronize the CPU and GPU operations in order to correctly implement N-buffered rendering.

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Forward vs Deferred vs Forward+ Rendering with DirectX 11

Forward+ with HLSL

Forward+ with HLSL

In this article, I will analyze and compare three rendering algorithms:

  1. Forward Rendering
  2. Deferred Shading
  3. Forward+ (Tiled Forward Rendering)

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Introduction to DirectX 11

DirectX

DirectX

In this article, I will introduce the reader to DirectX 11. We will create a simple demo application that can be used to create more complex DirectX examples and demos. After reading this article, you should be able to create a DirectX application and render geometry using a simple vertex shader and pixel shader.

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Understanding Quaternions

Understanding Quaternions

Understanding Quaternions

In this article I will attempt to explain the concept of Quaternions in an easy to understand way. I will explain how you might visualize a Quaternion as well as explain the different operations that can be applied to quaternions. I will also compare applications of matrices, euler angles, and quaternions and try to explain when you would want to use quaternions instead of Euler angles or matrices and when you would not.

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Introduction to Shader Programming with Cg 3.1

NVIDIA Cg

NVIDIA Cg

In this article I will introduce the reader to shader programming using the Cg shader programming language. I will use OpenGL graphics API to communicate with the Cg shaders. This article does not explain how use OpenGL. If you require an introduction to OpenGL, you can follow my previous article titled Introduction to OpenGL.

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Using OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects

Vertex Buffer Object

Vertex Buffer Object

In this article, I will explain how to use the ARB_vertex_buffer_object extension to efficiently render geometry in OpenGL.
If you are not sure how to use extensions in OpenGL, you can refer to my previous article titled OpenGL Extensions. If you have never programmed an OpenGL application before, you can refer to my previous article titled Introduction to OpenGL.

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Introduction to OpenCL

OpenCL

OpenCL

In this article I will provide a brief introduction to OpenCL. OpenCL is a open standard for general purpose parallel programming across CPUs, GPUs, and other programmable parallel devices. I assume that the reader is familiar with the C/C++ programming languages. I will use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to show how you can setup a project that is compiled with the OpenCL API.

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