Rendering

When most people think about computer games, the first thing that comes to mind is stunning three-dimensional graphics. Most games these days aim to produce photorealistic graphics—imagery with such high detail and physically accurate lighting that it can be difficult to tell the difference between the game's virtual world and reality. Some games opt for a more-stylized look, perhaps emulating the appearance of a cartoon, or a pencil sketch, or an impressionist painting. And of course, two-dimensional game graphics is still very much a thing in the game industry. In the following two chapters, we'll focus primarily on real-time three-dimensional graphics, and we'll generally assume that photorealistic rendering is the goal. However nearly all of what we'll learn can also be applied to non-photorealistic 3D rendering, and we'll briefly touch on some of the ways in which stylized effects can be achieved.