GPU Pro 6: Advanced Rendering Techniques

The latest edition of this bestselling game development reference offers proven tips and techniques for the real-time rendering of special effects and visualization data that are useful for beginners and seasoned game and graphics programmers alike.

Exploring recent developments in the rapidly evolving field of real-time rendering, GPU Pro⁶: Advanced Rendering Techniques assembles a high-quality collection of cutting-edge techniques for advanced graphics processing unit (GPU) programming. It incorporates contributions from more than 45 experts who cover the latest developments in graphics programming for games and movies.

The book covers advanced rendering techniques that run on the DirectX or OpenGL runtimes, as well as on any other runtime with any language available. It details the specific challenges involved in creating games across the most common consumer software platforms such as PCs, video consoles, and mobile devices.

The book includes coverage of geometry manipulation; rendering techniques, handheld devices programming, effects in image space, shadows, 3D engine design, graphics-related tools, and environmental effects. It also includes a dedicated section on general purpose GPU programming that covers CUDA, DirectCompute, and OpenCL examples.

In color throughout, GPU Pro⁶ presents ready-to-use ideas and procedures that can help solve many of your daily graphics programming challenges. Example programs with downloadable source code are also provided on the book’s CRC Press web page.

Table of Contents

Part I: Geometry Manipulation
Chapter I-1: Dynamic GPU Terrain
Chapter I-2: Bandwidth-Efficient Procedural Meshes in the GPU via Tessellation
Chapter I-3: Real-Time Deformation of Subdivision Surfaces on Object Collisions
Chapter I-4: Realistic Volumetric Explosions in Games

Part II: Rendering
Chapter II-1: Next-Generation Rendering in Thief
Chapter II-2: Grass Rendering and Simulation with LOD
Chapter II-3: Hybrid Reconstruction Antialiasing
Chapter II-4: Real-Time Rendering of Physically Based Clouds Using Precomputed Scattering
Chapter II-5: Sparse Procedural Volume Rendering

Part III: Lighting
Chapter III-1: Real-Time Lighting via Light Linked List
Chapter III-2: Deferred Normalized Irradiance Probes
Chapter III-3: Volumetric Fog and Lighting
Chapter III-4: Physically Based Light Probe Generation on GPU
Chapter III-5: Real-Time Global Illumination Using Slices

Part IV: Shadows
Chapter IV-1: Practical Screen-Space Soft Shadows
Chapter IV-2: Tile-Based Omnidirectional Shadows
Chapter IV-3: Shadow Map Silhouette Revectorization

Part V: Mobile Devices
Chapter V-1: Hybrid Ray Tracing on a PowerVR GPU
Chapter V-2: Implementing a GPU-Only Particle-Collision System with ASTC 3D Textures and OpenGL ES 3.0
Chapter V-3: Animated Characters with Shell Fur for Mobile Devices
Chapter V-4: High Dynamic Range Computational Photography on Mobile GPUs

Part VI: Compute
Chapter VI-1: Compute-Based Tiled Culling
Chapter VI-2: Rendering Vector Displacement-Mapped Surfaces in a GPU Ray Tracer
Chapter VI-3: Smooth Probabilistic Ambient Occlusion for Volume Rendering

Part VII: 3D Engine Design
Chapter VII-1: Block-Wise Linear Binary Grids for Fast Ray-Casting Operations
Chapter VII-2: Semantic-Based Shader Generation Using Shader Shaker
Chapter VII-3: ANGLE: Bringing OpenGL ES to the Desktop