Category:Rendering

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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:

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.

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