3D Rendering Pipeline

Engine-agnostic reference for 3D rendering concepts: coordinate spaces, transformations, rasterization, visibility, texturing, and lighting. Synthesized from Marian Pekar's 3D Software Renderer in Odin from Scratch tutorial series (marianpekar.com).

Relationship to other skills: This skill covers the what and why of rendering math. For Odin/raylib implementation specifics, see odin-gamedev/references/raylib-rendering.md. For shader implementation in Godot, see godot-shader. For art direction and visual communication, see game-visuals. For diagnosing frame-rate and GPU bottlenecks, see game-performance.

Pipeline Overview

A 3D renderer transforms geometry through a series of coordinate spaces before producing pixels. Each space has a distinct purpose; each transition is a matrix multiplication.