Some really nice examples of these effects (courtesy of RandomChaos blog) In this chapter, the author does a good job of explaining all the parts needed to achieve deferred rendering and how best to implement it with also a few tips and tricks to go beyond, covering things such as:ĭeferred Directional, Point, Spot and Capsule lights Through this chapter, you will learn what you need to know to light up your scene and the models within it.ĭeferred shading is one of those advanced techniques to light a scene in a more efficient and performant way by calculating all lights at the same time without the limitation of the geometry that it’s being applied to, sounds great but a lot trickier to implement than standard lighting especially since it takes multiple passes within the shader to accomplish. Lighting is one of the most basic and commonly used shader techniques, after all without light there would only be darkness (which is only good for audio games ), this chapter goes into some depth on the main basic lighting systems used in games today, such as:
The book is laid out like a traditional HLSL cookbook breaking down effects and showing how each component works and its end effect on the resultant output. Here’s a brief run through what all the chapters are and what to expect from them. I digress, so what can we look for in this book. This puts me in good stead when I’m reading through Nvidia and AMD’s shader libraries looking for what I want or to keep things simple for just the effect I’m looking for. This book, like many cookbooks is a heavy set reference for shading techniques and explanations of some generic lighting and post processing effects, what makes it good is that it leads you down a very direct path to understand exactly how these effects work and what makes them tick, leading you to try and test your own techniques and improve on them or create new shaders.Īn appreciation I got from reading this book is an understanding of how some effects are made and what inputs are needed to simplify their application. The HLSL Development Cookbook is targeted for intermediate or experienced developers in the land of shaders so some up front knowledge is needed to get a real appreciation of the tips and tricks contained within, not to worry though if you are a noob or beginner then check out Riemers HLSL tutorial to get yourself up to speed on the basics –. So if you want to know more about what goes on under the covers and start making / enhancing your own effects, read on.
To really make your game shine and look impressive, you need to have a good understanding of shaders, even if you only intend on using the many resources out there to enhance your game, it helps to understand how and why these things work. XNA did a lot of this for us with 5 built in shaders that gave us a leg up and provided most of the basic effects used in common games. While finally getting back round to my game development roots, another interesting book crossed my desk which delves into the mysterious and sometimes scary world of shaders.Įven I only have an appreciation for what's going on under the covers to create the mind blowing effects that only comes from mucking around in the graphics streams on the graphics card.
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