2008

ActiveShade Initialize and Update
ActiveShade rendering on page 5910 is a two-step process:
■ Initialize
■ Update shading
The Initialize Pass
Rendering can be slow. The initialize pass is meant to take care of the most
time-consuming portions of rendering, to allow the update pass to take place
as quickly as possible. Initialization includes the following steps:
■ Evaluate the scene geometry into meshes.
■ Apply space warps.
■ Do transformations and clipping.
■ Evaluate textures and shade materials.
■ Perform optimizations to speed later processing, such as merging fragments
from the same surface that are in the same pixel.
The result of initialization is a buffer. This is a compressed rendering that, like
a
G-Buffer on page 7795 , contains the rendering plus additional information
used by the second step, updating.
During the initialize pass, progress is indicated by a row of pixels (white by
default) that traverses the top edge of the ActiveShade window.
The Update Shading Pass
Updating shading takes the buffer created by the first pass, initialization, and
uses information in that buffer to change the color of pixels when you make
changes to lights and materials in the scene.
During the update pass, progress is indicated by a row of pixels (white by
default) that descends the right edge of the ActiveShade window.
Glossary | 7703