The Rendering Engine

When most people think about computer and video games, the first thing that comes to mind is the stunning three-dimensional graphics. Realtime 3D rendering is an exceptionally broad and profound topic, so there’s simply no way to cover all of the details in a single chapter. Thankfully there are a great many excellent books and other resources available on this topic. In fact, real-time 3D graphics is perhaps one of the best covered of all the technologies that make up a game engine. The goal of this chapter, then, is to provide you with a broad understanding of real-time rendering technology and to serve as a jumping-off point for further learning. After you’ve read through these pages, you should find that reading other books on 3D graphics seems like a journey through familiar territory. You might even be able to impress your friends at parties (. . . or alienate them. . . ) We’ll begin by laying a solid foundation in the concepts, theory and mathematics that underlie any real-time 3D rendering engine. Next, we’ll have a look at the software and hardware pipelines used to turn this theoretical framework into reality. We’ll discuss some of the most common optimization techniques and see how they drive the structure of the tools pipeline and the runtime rendering API in most engines. We’ll end with a survey of some of the advanced rendering techniques and lighting models in use by game engines today. Throughout this chapter, I’ll point you to some of my favorite 443 444 10. The Rendering Engine books and other resources that should help you to gain an even deeper understanding of the topics we’ll cover here.