In shader programming, what does a vertex shader do?

In shader programming, what does a vertex shader do?

• A. Processes vertex attributes to produce transformed vertices.
• B. Computes final pixel colors for each fragment.
• C. Runs on the CPU to simulate physics.
• D. Generates texture mipmaps.

Answer: (A)

The vertex shader runs for every vertex and is responsible for transforming its position into the space used by the rest of the pipeline. It takes the vertex’s attributes—such as position, normal, and texture coordinates—and applies the model-view-projection matrices to place the vertex correctly on screen (in clip space). It can also compute or pass along per-vertex data to the next stage, which the fragment shader will use later for shading. This stage is about positioning and preparing data, not coloring final pixels. Coloring and shading per pixel are handled by the fragment (pixel) shader after rasterization. It also runs on the GPU, not the CPU, and mipmap generation for textures is separate from vertex processing.

The vertex shader runs for every vertex and is responsible for transforming its position into the space used by the rest of the pipeline. It takes the vertex’s attributes—such as position, normal, and texture coordinates—and applies the model-view-projection matrices to place the vertex correctly on screen (in clip space). It can also compute or pass along per-vertex data to the next stage, which the fragment shader will use later for shading.

This stage is about positioning and preparing data, not coloring final pixels. Coloring and shading per pixel are handled by the fragment (pixel) shader after rasterization. It also runs on the GPU, not the CPU, and mipmap generation for textures is separate from vertex processing.