WebGL Shader Programming Primer

WebGL shaders are programs that run on the GPU, allowing for efficient and complex graphical effects. There are two types of shaders:

• Vertex Shaders: Process vertex data, determining the position of each vertex on the screen.
• Fragment Shaders: Determine the color of each pixel within the shapes defined by the vertex shader.

Shaders are written in GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language), which is similar to C. They use uniforms for input values that remain constant for all vertices/fragments, and varyings to pass data from vertex to fragment shaders.

Common operations in shaders include vector and matrix math, as well as built-in functions for trigonometry, interpolation, and more.

To learn more, check out WebGL Fundamentals or The Book of Shaders.