Book Description

Shader X5 Advanced Rendering Techniques is the newest volume in this cutting-edge, indispensable series for game and graphics programmers. This all new volume is packed with articles covering state-of-the-art shader techniques and tools written by programming professionals from around the world. These authors have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the field, and each section is edited by an industry expert to ensure the highest quality and usefulness! The collection is broken into nine comprehensive sections. The geometry section covers improved N-Patches, how to generate dynamic wrinkles on animated meshes and much more. In the rendering section youï'll discover how to generate a tangent space ordinate system in the pixel shader, how to setup an area light for games, and a variety of other techniques. Practical and useful multi-frustum shadow maps like Cascaded Shadow Maps and Queried Virtual Shadow maps are covered in the shadow section. The environmental techniques section features the beautiful volume particle approaches: Rain and Godrays under water. The global illumination section covers techniques that should work in next-gen games. The new mobile section lays out the basics of shader driven next-gen mobile development and some advanced effects tailored to the devices. Many shader-relevant engine design decisions are covered in the 3D Engine Design section. It also deals with post-processing effects, how to design shader plugins, and how to bind shader data. The Beyond Pixels and Triangles section covers a printf for the pixel shader, random number generator on the GPU, and many more.