I was asked many times to describe the graphics pipeline
#Graphics programmer interview questions
spare lion
also to describe various anti aliasing techniques
I've been asked various basic level math stuff like how to determine if a ray and triangle intersect
alpine pond
i was asked about TAA, gboofers, single layer water, and single pass downsampling
spare lion
oh yeah I was also asked about forward vs deferred rendering
light hare
All seem pretty reasonable thanks!
light hare
I was asked many times to describe the graphics pipeline
did mesh shaders exist yet?š
tame schooner
I remember being asked about barycentric coords and how they're used for attribute interpolation as well as to explain homogenous coords
spare lion
did mesh shaders exist yet?š
yes
mesh shaders are 2018 tech and I got out of college in '21
ruby skiff
ive heard abt this and searched on google but i dont understadn when to use mesh shader
is it easier to use than vertex + framgnet
light hare
probably not
replaces the whole pipeline before the rasterizer
pretty cool but i havenāt played with them rly
ruby skiff
yeah idk
spare lion
it's not insanely complex but it's definitely more advanced/niche than good old vertex shaders
I mean it's more general, but usually you don't need the complexity that generality brings
ruby skiff
what does it have that vertex + fragment doesnt
light hare
more local units of work for the rasterizer that it may or may not prefer
and more fine grained culling
spare lion
you typically process a meshlet with one mesh shader workgroup which means you can share data between threads
ruby skiff
oh its easier to do culling ?
light hare
not really easier
spare lion
you have more freedom in how threads map to primitives so stuff like culling and geometry generation can be done more effectively
spare lion
and you get the task shader stage where you can do stuff like spawn or cull work without having to write to global memory
ruby skiff
and you get the task shader stage where you can do stuff like spawn or cull work...
seems interesting i might try to play with it
echo hazel
They are very flexible and efficient. You can completely replace the vertex pipeline with them and outperform it.
They benefit from shared memory across the workgroup, and they bypass some fixed-function stages on the GPU that can be rapidly overwhelmed.
Here are some experiments by AMD
This is a great read :
https://gpuopen.com/learn/mesh_shaders/mesh_shaders-index/
Also as others have said they are awesome at rendering parametric / procedural content
light hare
@knotty fern kind of related to general stuff but do you have any advice about stuff that's a little more on the techincal side in so far as potential topics or transitioning an answer into a more discussion type thing
knotty fern
<@132788389849202688> kind of related to general stuff but do you have any advic...
i can't really speak to graphics programming interviews
all my interviews have been for tools roles
my advice is v much about your attitude towards the interview though
like often you'll get questions like "how would you do xyz"
questions like that are great bc you get pretty much all the space you want, and you can answer it how you want
like you can ask clarifying questions about usecases, requirements, etc. you can explore different options. you can go into how you'd go about figuring out how to do something
ofc if you're getting trivia questions like "what is strict aliasing" or "explain the graphics pipeline" there's much less space for this
but i am making the assumption that your interviewer is also competent and will give you that space at some point
unfortunately some people give terrible interviews and there's not much getting around that, but so far p much every interview I've had has had process questions like this
approaching them like puzzles to solve, bringing the interviewers into the process etc will get you much further than trying to give a correct answer
inner kiln
Knowing what rendering techniques you mentioned in your resume helps a lot (applies to entire resume tbh)
light hare
can't get caught lying red handed š
misty laurel
i got the nerves going and i still have a couple days
You can't afford to let the nerves keep you from exploring the job the way you need to during the interview. Your attitude needs to be that the job may not actually be a good fit for what you want. You've got to focus on that, and let your training speak for itself. What kind of team do you want to be a part of? How often do people move around on projects? Would you have freedom you want? Ask about their process and rituals, ask yourself whether that sounds good.
light hare
thatās all very true thank you
itās industry change tho and seems like a rare opportunity especially now which is probably giving some rose tinted-ness
misty laurel
itās industry change tho and seems like a rare opportunity especially now which ...
The grass is always greener. Best of luck regardless. Stay aggressive, you're weeding them out. They're not the only option.
light hare
real and true much thanks
spare lion
i got the nerves going and i still have a couple days
wasn't your own advice to pop a perc
jk lol I get it. it'll get better with experience and eventually you won't give a shit (i.e. you'll be confident)
spare lion
is this your first time?
ime a lot of the anxiety comes from not knowing what to expect exactly. once you get some interviews under your belt you start to get a better understanding of what they might ask, what they expect of you, and your own abilities
when you have all three you can be pretty confident even when they ask you questions you don't immediately know the answer to, because you can spin it into a discussion about things you do know, or give honest "I don't know"s with the confidence that the other skills you display will more than make up for them
light hare
iāve done a couple interviews but not for graphics
we shall see iāll try to seem smart but not like a dickhead and be honest when i donāt know hopefully thatās enough š and if itās not oh well what are you gonna do
spare lion
number one is don't bullshit them
light hare
true
spare lion
if they ask you how to compute a ray triangle intersection and you don't know off the top of your head, just tell them. but THEN give it an attempt
like you might know what kind of tools you'd need to implement it, like ray-plane intersection
or something about barycoords
spare lion
if they ask you how to compute a ray triangle intersection and you don't know of...
btw this is me projecting
light hare
reverse z??
that all makes sense tho
be honest and donāt be a dickšhopefully you know enough
spare lion
also with a question like that they'll be looking to see if you understand linear algebra basics, like intuition for what dot products and cross products do
if you know those then you can slowly work out your own ray-tri intersection