Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
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Overview of
Direct3D 11
The Direct3D 11 rendering API has extended Direct3D in several key areas, while retain-
ing much of the API structure that was introduced with Direct3D 10. This chapter will
provide an introduction to Direct3D 11 and will discuss some of these changes to the API.
It begins with a brief description of how Direct3D is organized and how it interacts with
a GPU installed in your computer. This will provide an idea of what the various software
components involved in using Direct3D must do to perform some rendering.
Next is a discussion of the rendering pipeline, with a brief overview of each of the
pipeline stages. Then we look at the new additions to the API that allow the GPU to be
used for general computation, in addition to its normal rendering duties. Once we have
constructed a clear overview of how the pipeline is structured, we will look at all of the
different types of resources that can be bound to the pipeline, and the different places where
they can be bound. After we understand the pipeline and how it interacts with resources, we
will look at the two primary interfaces that are used to work with Direct3D 11—namely,
the Device and the Device Context. These two interfaces are the bread and butter of the
API and hence warrant a discussion of what they are used for. The discussion of these
main interfaces then leads into a walk-through of a basic rendering application that uses
Direct3D 11.
This chapter provides an overview of the topics mentioned above. It is intended to
introduce a conceptual overview of Direct3D 11, and then to provide a working knowl-
edge of how an application can use it. The first half of this chapter uses few or no actual
code samples, while the second half provides a more hands-on introduction to the API.
After reading this chapter, you should have a basic understanding of the architecture of
Direct3D 11, and of what an application needs to do to manipulate the contents of a win-
dow. Each of the concepts discussed in the overview chapter is explored in great detail in
the following chapters.
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