# The Rendering Pipeline

The four rendering stages:

1. Vertex Specification
2. Vertex processing
3. Rasterisation
4. Fragment shader

![1647365644.png](img/1647365644.png)

- **Application stage** is the software that runs on the CPU
  - ![1647366052.png](img/1647366052.png)
- **Vertex processing stage** is responsible for processing operations on individual vertices
  - In this stage vertex positions are transformed from model space to world and then view space, and projected to clip coordinates
  - Vertex **post processing**:
    1. Primitive Assembly
    2. Clipping
       - ![1647366278.png](img/1647366278.png)
    3. Perspective divide
    4. View-port transformation
- **Rasterisation stage** is responsible for calculating all of the pixels inside the triangles that are being rendered
- **Pixel processing stage** is responsible for processing operations on individual fragments.
  - Texturing can also happen in the fragment shader
  - Fragment shader computes a colour which is then merged with the colour buffer
  - Merging calculates which fragments are hidden behind other fragments and only keeps the colour for the visible fragment