Book Image

3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook

By : Sergey Kosarevsky, Viktor Latypov
3 (1)
Book Image

3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook

3 (1)
By: Sergey Kosarevsky, Viktor Latypov

Overview of this book

OpenGL is a popular cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) used for rendering 2D and 3D graphics, while Vulkan is a low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics API that targets high-performance applications. 3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook helps you learn about modern graphics rendering algorithms and techniques using C++ programming along with OpenGL and Vulkan APIs. The book begins by setting up a development environment and takes you through the steps involved in building a 3D rendering engine with the help of basic, yet self-contained, recipes. Each recipe will enable you to incrementally add features to your codebase and show you how to integrate different 3D rendering techniques and algorithms into one large project. You'll also get to grips with core techniques such as physically based rendering, image-based rendering, and CPU/GPU geometry culling, to name a few. As you advance, you'll explore common techniques and solutions that will help you to work with large datasets for 2D and 3D rendering. Finally, you'll discover how to apply optimization techniques to build performant and feature-rich graphics applications. By the end of this 3D rendering book, you'll have gained an improved understanding of best practices used in modern graphics APIs and be able to create fast and versatile 3D rendering frameworks.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Implementing projective shadows for directional lights

In the previous chapter, we learned how to set up a shadow mapping pipeline with OpenGL and Vulkan. Our focus was more on the API rather than on shadow correctness or versatility. In the Implementing shadow maps in OpenGL recipe of Chapter 8, Image-Based Techniques, we learned how to render shadows from spotlights using perspective projection for our shadow-casting light source. Directional light sources typically simulate sunlight, and a single light source can illuminate the entire scene. In its simplest form, this means we should construct a projection matrix which takes the bounds of the scene into account. Let's take a look at how to implement this basic approach and add some shadows to our Bistro rendering example.

Getting ready

Make sure you revisit the Implementing shadow maps in OpenGL recipe of Chapter 8, Image-Based Techniques, before you learn about the shadow mapping topic.

The calculations described...