Checking the cost of our materials

So far, this introductory chapter has gone over the basics of the rendering pipeline – we’ve seen how to create a PBM, understood what the different Shading Models were, and saw how light played a key role in the overall look of the final image. However, we can’t move on to different topics just yet without learning a bit more about the impact that our materials have on the machines that are displaying them.

The first thing that we need to be aware of is that some materials or effects are more expensive in terms of their rendering cost than others. Chances are you have already experienced that in the past – think, for example, about frames per second in video games. The number of frames per second that are fed into our displays by the graphics cards directly influences how the game plays and feels. Many elements affect performance, but one crucial factor in that equation is the complexity of the materials we create.

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