Chapter 9. Effects

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As you have seen, dealing with a real-time environment calls for some ingenuity. Realistic and convincing effects pose one of the greatest challenges yet.

Whether it’s fog, rain, or explosions, creating effects for display in real-time takes some creative problem solving. Before we focus on effects for games, I’d like to talk a bit about prerendered effects in order to provide a proper comparison.

Traditional CG effects can be generated in numerous ways. Much of what you see in feature films or commercials is prerendered, or composited ...

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