PyFX - an active effect framework

The programmability of modern graphics processing units (GPUs) provide great flexibility for creating a wide range of advanced effects for interactive graphics. Developing such effects requires writing not only shader code to be executed by the GPU but also supporting code in the application where the effect is to be used. This support code creates dependencies between effects and the applications that use them, making it harder to evolve applications and to reuse effects. Existing effect frameworks, such as DirectX Effects and CgFX, can only provide partial encapsulation because they consider effects as passive data structures. In this paper we present an effect framework written in an ordinary scripting language where effects are active entities. This makes it possible to completely encapsulate both shaders and support code thereby minimizing the dependencies to the application. (Less)