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10 The Rendering Engine

W

hen most people think about computer and video games, the fi rst thing
that comes to mind is the stunning three-dimensional graphics. Real-
time 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 tech-
nologies that make up a game engine. The goal of this chapter, then, is to pro-
vide you with a broad understanding of real-time rendering technology and
to serve as a jumping-off point for further learning. Aft er you’ve read through
these pages, you should fi nd 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 math-
ematics that underlie any real-time 3D rendering engine. Next, we’ll have
a look at the soft ware 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 books