How a 3D scene becomes pixels. The GPU graphics pipeline from vertices to fragments, writing vertex and fragment shaders in GLSL, lighting a surface with diffuse and specular models, wrapping detail on with textures and normal maps, physically-based rendering for realistic materials, and how shadows and real-time ray tracing work.
Before you start
Rendering is applied linear algebra — the Game Mathematics course (vectors, matrices, coordinate spaces) is the ideal prerequisite. Shaders here are GLSL; the concepts transfer to any graphics API.
The Graphics Pipeline
A GPU turns triangles into pixels through a fixed sequence of stages. Understand the pipeline — vertex processing, rasterization, fragment processing — because everything you do in graphics plugs into it.
Shaders & GLSL
Shaders are small programs that run on the GPU for every vertex and every pixel. Write your first vertex and fragment shaders in GLSL and learn how data flows in through attributes, uniforms, and varyings.
Lighting
Lighting turns flat shapes into believable surfaces. Learn the classic diffuse and specular models, how surface normals drive them, and the Phong/Blinn-Phong lighting every game built on before PBR.
Textures & Mapping
Textures wrap detail onto simple geometry without extra polygons. Learn UV mapping, texture sampling in a shader, and normal maps — the trick that fakes bumpy surface detail with a flat image.
Physically-Based Rendering
PBR models how light actually interacts with surfaces, so materials look right under any lighting. Learn the metallic-roughness workflow, energy conservation, and why PBR replaced ad-hoc shading.
Shadows & Ray Tracing
Shadows anchor objects to the world, and ray tracing is reshaping real-time lighting. Learn shadow mapping — the standard real-time shadow technique — and how rasterization compares to ray tracing.