BETA
Chapter 1
Flattening the third dimension
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Answer
Chapter 2
Painting with virtual light
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Answer
Chapter 3
Tricking the brain with depth
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Answer
Chapter 4
The brain's clever shortcuts
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YOUR GOAL
Master of Seeing 3D in video games
Ch 2 · Painting with virtual light
diegoplays Paint glowing light onto flat shapes to learn how shading creates a 3D illusion.
diegoplays Normal Mapping
Red, green, and blue, tell the light what to do! (Yeah, fake that 3D view!) / A flat purple sheet turns to cobblestone street! (Oh, it tricks you too!)
diegoplays Shadow mapping renders the game world from the light's point of view to find dark spots.
diegoplays Normal mapping uses colored textures to trick light into bouncing off flat surfaces as if they were bumpy.
Fun Fact
Ray tracing history: Real-time ray tracing was so hard that it took nearly 40 years from its invention to run smoothly in games.
Quiz
What color channel data does normal mapping use to store the direction of fake bumps on a flat surface?
Quiz
Which shading technique developed in 1971 interpolates light intensity across a polygon to make it look smooth?
Quiz
In what year did NVIDIA release its first RTX graphics cards, enabling real-time ray tracing in consumer video games?
Quiz
Who invented the shadow mapping technique in 1978 to calculate where light is blocked?
Quiz
Which advanced graphics technique simulates the physical path of individual light rays to create realistic reflections?