Chapter 4. 3D Graphics
Although the first 3D games were released in the arcade era, it wasn’t really until the mid-to-late 1990s that 3D took off. Today, nearly all AAA titles on consoles and PCs are 3D games. And as the power of smartphones increases, more and more mobile games are as well.
The primary technical challenge of a 3D game is displaying the game world’s 3D environment on a flat 2D screen. This chapter discusses the building blocks necessary to accomplish this.
Basics
The first 3D games needed to implement all their rendering in software. This meant that even something as basic as drawing a line had to be implemented by a graphics programmer. The set of algorithms necessary to draw 3D objects into a 2D color buffer are collectively ...
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