Lighting and Post-Processing

In the gaming industry today, customers crave high visual fidelity. There are of course exceptions for games that are deliberately going for a cartoonish or “retro” look, but most triple-A games today aim to achieve near-photorealistic results. But what differentiates a great-looking 3D scene from one that appears lackluster? Certainly geometric detail plays an important role—if we are to believe we're looking at a real human face, the illusion is broken if the viewer can detect hard edges between triangles. Dynamics also play an important role—a scene that is static tends to look less realistic than one containing a wide variety of things that move in natural-looking ways. However, arguably the most important factor in achieving a photorealistic rendered scene is lighting . In Chapter 11 we laid the foundations of 3D rendering technology and explored practical ways to render a scene. In this chapter we'll round out our discussion of 3D graphics by delving into the fascinating world of lighting.