Patent ID: 7548238

Claim:
In a computer graphics system for generating an image of a scene from a representation to which at least one instantiated phenomenon has been attached, the instantiated phenomenon comprising an encapsulated shader DAG comprising at least one shader node, the improvement comprising: a metanode environment operable for the creation of metanodes, the metanodes comprising component shaders that can be combined to build more complex shaders, a graphical user interface (GUI) in communication with the metanode environment and operable to manage the metanode environment to enable a user to construct shader graphs and phenomena using the metanode environment, and a software language useable by a human operator and operable to manage the metanode environment, implement shaders and unify discrete shading applications, wherein: the software language is configurable as a superset of a plurality of selected shader languages for selected hardware platforms, and the software language is operable to enable a compiler function to generate, from a single, re-usable description of a phenomenon expressed in the software language, optimized software code for a selected hardware platform in a selected shader language.