Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 10

Chapter 6

Lighting

Figure 6.1 shows how important lighting and shading are in conveying the solid form and volume of an object. The unlit sphere on the left looks like a flat 2D circle, whereas the lit sphere on the right does look 3D. In fact, our visual perception of the world depends on light and its interaction with materials, and consequently, much of the problem of generating photorealistic scenes has to do with physically accurate lighting models.

Figure 6.1: (a) An unlit sphere looks 2D. (b) A lit sphere looks 3D.

Of course, in general, the more accurate the model, the more computationally expensive it is; thus a balance must be reached ...