There is a certain standard expected of a game in this day and age. As technology progresses and the number of transistors in any given computational unit increases, there is more and more power at our disposal to do what was previously unheard of. One thing that definitely makes use of all of this extra horse power is dynamic lighting. Because of its stunning visual results, it has become an integral part of most video games, and is now one of the core technologies that are expected to come with them.
In this chapter, we're going to cover the following topics:
Using the technique of deferred rendering/shading
Implementing a multi-pass lighting shader
Faking geometry complexity using normal maps
Using specular maps to create shiny surfaces
Using height maps to make lighting feel more three-dimensional
Let's start shedding some light on this subject!