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Mega Deep Concepts

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Ravi Mohan edited this page May 19, 2022 · 5 revisions

Here we maintain Catalog of terminologies to be in strict conformation with AAA jargon with good fidelity.

1. Texture in gaming is an abstraction of memory accessibility for rendering-relevant data organization. It manifests in variety of forms known as Texture Maps. Mathematically, I would like to imagine a function with domain as data (stored in specific way in the memory), valued in rendering specific, per pixel(?), information (pixel color, z-depth, and other surface properties) classified as Target space. A texture might be used as a stand-alone data table. Examples:

  • Bitmap: The usual image storing format.
  • Light Map: The data of pre-computed lighting (Phong-reflection) for each pixel. Same data can be stored per vertex basis (in the vertex attributes with strides). At runtime, the light map texture is projected onto the objects in the scene in order to determine the light’s effects on them.
  • Diffuse Map: The amount of fading (diffusive) of the colors on surface.

The coordinate chart for textures are generally named UV (and W for three-dimensional textures) which are normalized maps for projecting data onto the triangulated meshes. For detailed information we refer to GEA (second edition, section 10.1.2.5).

image

2. Material is a container holding the entire information for rendering an object (for instance a mesh). It may contain multiple textures and how to render those textures using which shaders. In other words, all the surface relevant information (for Target space) along with higher rendering abstractions (decisions) and parameters (relevant to Physics, shadow scheme, and post processing), except the information residing in Vertex/Index Buffer objects (or meshes).

image

3. Vertex Array Object is basically mesh + material. The render packet pedigree for rendering engine.

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