HLSL and Pixel Shaders for XAML Developers
Regular price
€17.99
Graphic Shaders are used throughout the game and movie industry to improve onscreen graphics. They are versatile, doing important tasks like making computer rendered aliens look realistic, providing the ripples on a background lake or growing fur on the latest Pixar monster. In the PC world, programmers are often delighted to find that shaders are nothing more than a miniature program that is optimized to run on the computers GPU. This happiness fades when they start exploring the strange programming model underlying shaders however. Because shaders are strung together in an unusual fashion and run on a massive parallel processer developers shouldn't use their traditional OO or procedural approach to writing code. Writing effective shaders requires a mind shift regarding how to craft a useful algorithm. To top it off, shaders are written in a unfamiliar C-like language. In the Microsoft DirectX world the dominant language is High Level Shader Language or HLSL.
Walt's enthusiasm for crafting software interfaces blossomed early. Just a few days after discovering how to make pixels move around the screen of a borrowed computer he was devouring books on the topic of computer graphics and UI design. Now he travels the world speaking at software conferences and teaching a diverse portfolio of programming topics for corporate clients. On the consulting side he continues to work with customers like Microsoft, HP, Intel, and Intuit and enjoys being part of the Wintellect consultant group. Recently he has entered the video training market producing .NET titles for Lynda.com He writes for several publications including Code Magazine and TechTarget.com. His current UI obsession revolves around the Windows 8 Metro, Silverlight, Surface and WPF APIs. You can find his blog at blog.wpfwonderland.com. Walt is also a Microsoft MVP and author of the free Shazzam WPF Shader utility (shazzam-tool.com).