Overview of WebGL's rendering pipeline
Here we will see a simplified version of WebGL's rendering pipeline. In subsequent chapters, we will discuss the pipeline in more detail.
![Overview of WebGL's rendering pipeline](/api/v2/epubs/9781849691727/files/graphics/1727_02_02.jpg)
Let's take a moment to describe every element separately.
Vertex Buffer Objects (VBOs)
VBOs contain the data that WebGL requires to describe the geometry that is going to be rendered. As mentioned in the introduction, vertex coordinates are usually stored and processed in WebGL as VBOs. Additionally, there are several data elements such as vertex normals, colors, and texture coordinates, among others, that can be modeled as VBOs.
Vertex shader
The vertex shader is called on each ...
Get WebGL Beginner's Guide now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.