shadebased

Shade-based rendering is a technique used in computer graphics to approximate the appearance of light and shadow in a scene without performing full ray tracing or global illumination calculations. It is commonly employed in real-time applications, such as video games and interactive simulations, where computational efficiency is critical.

The method relies on precomputed lighting data, often stored in textures or lightmaps, to simulate how light interacts with surfaces. These lightmaps are generated by baking lighting information into the scene’s geometry during a pre-processing stage. The technique approximates indirect lighting, reflections, and shadows by sampling these precomputed values at runtime. While it lacks the dynamic realism of physically based rendering, shade-based methods provide a balance between visual quality and performance.

Variations of shade-based rendering include ambient occlusion, which simulates soft shadows by approximating how much of the scene is visible from a given point, and screen-space techniques like screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) or screen-space reflections (SSR). These methods enhance perceived depth and realism by analyzing the rendered scene itself rather than relying solely on precomputed data.

Despite its limitations, shade-based rendering remains widely used due to its simplicity and effectiveness in achieving visually appealing results with minimal computational overhead. Modern implementations often combine it with other techniques, such as dynamic lighting or hybrid rendering approaches, to further improve realism while maintaining performance.