Pipeline State


For an overview about Renderers, see General Information. For a list of all Renderer functions and related topics, see Rendering.

The pipeline state is an internal, opaque renderer data structure that maintains the values that attribute output commands can modify during rendering or picking. The pipeline state is created when the renderer is associated with a drawable by invoking the PEXBeginRendering, PEXBeginPickOne, or PEXBeginPickAll function and exists until the invocation of a PEXEndRendering, PEXEndPickOne, or PEXEndPickAll function. The pipeline state also exists for the duration of a PEXRenderNetwork, PEXPickOne, or PEXPickAll function.

The pipeline state contains the same information as a pipeline context, and is initialized by the pipeline context associated with the renderer during PEXBeginRendering, PEXBeginPickOne, PEXBeginPickAll, PEXRenderNetwork, and PEXInitRenderer functions.

Values in the pipeline state are modified by attribute output commands as well as PEXCopyPCtoPipelineState. The description of each output command defines which pipeline state value the output command modifies. When a renderer draws a primitive output command, the attribute values currently in effect in the pipeline state are applied to the primitive.