Shader

Shader (verb to shade) may refer to:

• Program for 3D rendering pipeline which could be written in special shader language (GLSL, HLSL, Cg, ARB etc.). E.g. vertex shader, pixel shader, geometry shader etc.

• Quake 3 Material. In Id Tech 3, materials are named shaders (this includes many techical papers that describe MD3, Q3BSP etc.). In this regard, sometimes materials may be called shaders. Since Darkplaces engine's material system is using Id Tech 3 material approach as a base, its materials sometimes called shaders as well (also material files extension is .shader).

• Programmable block for anything that is processed in realtime. E.g. sound shaders, light shaders, entity shaders etc. Shader is different from script as it runs in realtime.