Taylor Bishop
Software Development
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An Exploration on Rendering Pipelines and Techniques
Real-time 3D simulations have to cheat omnidirectional shadowmapping, order-
to accurately modeling the physical range, and dynamic environment maps.
and take shortcuts when it comes
properties of light. A realistic simulation
would have to bounce around millions of While not physically accurate, these
close to light’s visual properties, and the approaches developers take to
rays in a scene to approximate anything
this approach is far too inefficient and
impractical to do in real-time simulations,
much less video games.
My goal for this thesis was to take a
3D scene and make it as pretty as
possible. After entertaining the idea
of implementing an accurate light
modeling simulation, I settled on taking a
handful of key rendering techniques and
implementing them in my engine. Those
techniques include a Forward+ rendering
pipeline, screen-space ambient occlusion,
60
independent transparency, high-dynamic
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
techniques are a popular sampling of
create realistic, aesthetically pleasing 3D
environments. The more performance we
can churn out of the hardware we work
with, the more complicated and pleasing
our scenes.