Category:Rendering


 * Main Page > >

= Category: Rendering = This page is to help game artists understand how a game engine renders their artwork.

Game Rendering Terms
It helps to understand the terms a graphics programmer uses, so you can talk the talk.


 * Draw call : definition here
 * Texture fetch : definition here
 * Fill rate : definition here
 * Transform cost : definition here
 * Frame rate : definition here
 * Frame buffer : definition here
 * VRAM, video memory : definition here
 * GPU : The Graphics Processing Unit is a parallel processor for floating point operations; it's the heart & soul of your graphics card. It's mostly used for rendering calculations, but it can also be tricked into doing physics, particle systems, vertex skinning, real-time texture compression, etc. It frees the CPU (Central Processing Unit) to handle the rest of the processing tasks in the game like transforms, AI, sound, etc.
 * Vertex Cache : definition here
 * Vertex Shader : definition here
 * Pixel Shader : definition here
 * Culling : If the view camera (the viewer's eye) can't see it, don't bother processing it and only worry about what the view camera can see.
 * : Trivial Accept/Reject Culling, Back-Face Culling, Occlusion Culling, Clipping.
 * Z-buffer, Depth Buffer : definition here

Threads to distill:
 * FAQ: Game art optimisation (do polygon counts really matter?)
 * How many textures per model is too many?
 * Polygon Count
 * DevMaster wiki Graphics topics

Offline Rendering vs. Real-Time Rendering

 * "Offline rendering systems, such as those used in CAD applications, stress accuracy over frame rate... each frame of animation might take hours to render. Real-time renderers, like game engines and simulators, tend to emphasize constant frame rate to keep animations smooth and fluid, and are willing to sacrifice both geometric and texture detail in order to do this." - from the ExtremeTech 3D Pipeline Tutorial by Dave Salvator

Game Rendering Primers
These articles help artists understand how game engines work, so they can learn how to build art that performs better.


 * Beautiful, Yet Friendly Part 1: Stop Hitting the Bottleneck - by Guillaume Provost
 * Beautiful, Yet Friendly Part 2: Maximizing Efficiency - by Guillaume Provost
 * ExtremeTech 3D Pipeline Tutorial - by Dave Salvator

<>
 * Main Page > >