Real-Time Rendering, Fourth Edition, 4th Edition

Chapter 20 Efficient Shading

DOI: 10.1201/b22086-20

“Never put off till to-morrow what you can do the day after to-morrow just as well.”

—Mark Twain

For simple scenes—relatively little geometry, basic materials, a few lights—we can use the standard GPU pipeline to render images without concerns about maintaining frame rate. Only when one or more elements become expensive do we need to use more involved techniques to rein in costs. In the previous chapter we focused on culling triangles and meshes from processing further downstream. Here we concentrate on techniques for reducing costs when evaluating materials and lights. For many of these methods, there is an additional processing cost, with the hope being that this expense is made up ...