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OpenGL Graphics Pipeline 

an abstract model that describes sequence of steps needed to render a 3D scene 

1. Application Stage

Initializing the window where the rendered graphics will be displayed.

• Reading data required for the rendering process and sending to the GPU, such as
  • vertex attributes, describes appearance of geometric shapes rendered, stored as in vertex buffer objects (VBO)
    
  • images to be applied to surfaces, stored in texture buffers 
  • source code for vertex shader and fragment shader programs, sent to GPU to be complied and loaded.
• Loop that re-renders the scene repeatedly, like 60 fps
• Monitoring hardware for user inputs, handled by the CPU
• Vertex Array Objects, manages the associations and whether they are turned on and off, between attributes data stored in VBOs and attribute variables in the vertex shader program

2. Geometry Processing

Determining the position of each vertex of the geometric shapes to be rendered, implemented by a program called the vertex shader

3. Rasterization

Determining which pixels corresponds to the geometric shapes rendered 

4. Pixel Processing

Determining the color of each pixel in the rendered image, involving a program called the fragment shader