Making Faster Fragment Shaders by Using Tessellation Shaders

Demonstration of how we can use tessellation shaders to make faster fragment shaders.

You can read the details in my blog

GUI Usage

I will describe how to use the GUI.

• Wireframe check this checkbox to render the teapot in wireframe.
• Do Vertex Calculation check this checkbox to move the calculation(either specular lighting calculation or procedural texture calculation) from the fragment shader to the vertex shader
• Use Tessellation if checked, the calculation is moved from the fragment shader to the tessellation evaluation shader.
• TessLevel controls the tessellation level of the tessellation shader.
• Render Mode controls whether we are calculating specular lighting, or we are calculating a procedural texture on the teapot.

Building

If on Linux or OS X, you can build it in the terminal by doing:

mkdir build && cmake .. && make

you can then launch the app by using the launch script:

./launch-tess_opt.sh

If on Windows, create a build/ folder, and run cmake .. from inside that folder. This will create a visual studio solution(if you have visual studio). Launch that solution, and then choose to compile the project named tess_opt.