I'm a newbie and I pretty much couldn't keep up with what's going on...

[DeadlyNinja]

...in today's 3D graphics world. Back when the GC, XB, and PS2 came out, I can still figure out most of the things they talk about. But now, I couldn't figure out what's the difference between a normal map and a bump map (I know what's a bump map, just can't tell the difference between it and normal map). All the new fancy lighting terms confuse me as well. And just what the heck is a shader? Whatever happened to the dictionary at Beyond3d.com? I could have sworn it was there. I looked through some of the terms but I haven't been able to read through everything before it was removed. Can someone educate me a bit in the world of 3D technology?

Oh yeah, can someone post pictures explaining shaders to me? I read about it on wikipedia, but I'm still a little foggy about it. All I know is that it has something to do with the way light is reflected off the surface of an object, but even that is probably not entirely accurate.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

But now, I couldn't figure out what's the difference between a normal map and a bump map (I know what's a bump map, just can't tell the difference between it and normal map).

At the fundamental level, there really isn't any difference between them -- in that they're both accomplishing the same thing and the method is basically identical (though the way it's represented may not always be depending on how far back in history you look). When something is referred to as a "normal map", it usually just means that the information for that map came from the normals of a high-res mesh rather than from a "heightfield" image. Of course, nowadays, it seems people like to refer to all such maps as normal maps because it's the hot term and in the end, it does store normals in an image.

And just what the heck is a shader?

Unfortunately, people use the term "shader" in different contexts to mean a million different things. What Unreal engine 2 called a "shader" is a bit different from what UE3 calls a "shader" which is different again from what Maya or 3ds MAX calls a "shader." In the context of hardware, more often than not, it refers to the programs that we write to run on the GPU to manipulate what you see. Everything from rotation and scaling on the vertex side to lighting and shadows on the pixel side is programmed into those so-called "shaders."

 

[DeadlyNinja]

At the fundamental level, there really isn't any difference between them -- in that they're both accomplishing the same thing and the method is basically identical (though the way it's represented may not always be depending on how far back in history you look). When something is referred to as a "normal map", it usually just means that the information for that map came from the normals of a high-res mesh rather than from a "heightfield" image. Of course, nowadays, it seems people like to refer to all such maps as normal maps because it's the hot term and in the end, it does store normals in an image.

Ok, but is there a way to tell whether it uses normal maps or bump maps just by looking at the picture?

Also, suppose I want to buy a good graphic card, should I just pay attention the FPS charts explaining how fast it'll run at so-and-so resolution, #xAA and #xAF; or should I also look this:

* Ultra Threaded Shader Engine
o Support of DirectX9 Programmable Vertex and Pixel Shaders
o VS3.0 Vertex Shader functionality
+ 1024 Instructions (Unlimited with flow control)
+ Single Cycle Trigonometric Operations (SIN & COS)
o PS3.0 Pixel Shaders
+ Ultra Thread Pixel Shader Engine
+ Fast Dynamic Branching
+ Single Precision 128-bit Floating Point (FP32) Processing
+ 16 textures per rendering pass
+ 32 temporary and constant registers per pixel
+ Facing register for two-sided lighting
+ Multiple render target support
+ Shadow volume rendering acceleration
+ 128-bit, 64-bit & 32-bit per pixel floating point colour formats
* Advanced Image Quality Features
o HDR Blending on FP16, Int10 and Custom Formats
+ All Blending modes work with all Anti-Aliasing Modes
o 3Dc+ Normal Map Compression
+ High quality 4:1 Normal Map Compression
+ Two Channel & Single Channel format support
o 2x/4x/6x Multi-Sampling full scene Anti-Aliasing modes, adaptive algorithm with programmable sample patterns and colour buffer compression
o Adaptive Anti-Aliasing for Transparent Surfaces
o Temporal Anti-Aliasing
o Lossless Color Compression (up to 6:1) at all resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions
o High Quality, Angle Invariant, Anisotropic Filter Mode
o 2x/4x/8x/16x Anisotropic Filtering modes
o 4Kx4X texture Support
o Fetch4 Texture Sampling
* Ring Bus Memory Controller
o Internal Ring Bus Architecture
o Programmable Arbitration Logic
o Fully Associative Caches
o 3-level, Floating Point, Hierarchical Z-Buffer with early Z test
o Lossless Z-Buffer compression (up to 48:1)
o Fast Z-Buffer Clear
o Z Cache Optimisations for shadow rendering
o Optimized for performance at high display resolutions, including widescreen HDTV resolutions
* AVIVO
o Dual 10-bit Display Pipelines
o Dual Integrated Dual Link TMDS Transmitters, Dual 400MHz RAMDACS, Xilleon Derived TV Output.
o Hardware Accelerated H.264 Decode

If I do, which stat should I pay more attention to?

 

[alt_nick]

This is an excellent article describing the different bumpmapping techniques.

Most of the values you listed are of no use to you unless you intend to program.
Speed and pixelshader version are enough for most consumers - image quality and hardware video decoding for the more demanding consumers.

What you'll also need to look up is driver quality and support for your favourite games. In this age of the internet all software is horribly lacking.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Excellent, thanks for all your help.

Oh but do you know any other site that gives you a thorough explaination on all the terms used these days (i.e. explaining normal maps, etc)?

 

[Snyder]

I'm sorry, this won't be of much help to you, but didn't this very site (Beyond3d) have quite a nice 3D glossary? I was looking for it on the front page, but the link isn't there anymore. Maybe a rework is under way? Or am I completely mistaken?

 

[Basic]

Just look at the top of this page to find the Glossary. But I don't think it's been updated for quite some time, so the new stuff isn't in there. It might look empty, but click on the letters.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Yeah, I see the glossary on the forms now, but the link's not on the main site. That's weird. Maybe the folks who run the site plan on updating their glossary a bit. I found this site because I was trying to read up about the newest techniques in 3D graphics.

 

[Snyder]

Ah, thanks. I can see why the link on the main page is gone. It is a bit...dated.

 

[guezz]

Just look at the top of this page to find the Glossary. But I don't think it's been updated for quite some time, so the new stuff isn't in there. It might look empty, but click on the letters.

This one is better - should've been updated as well

 

[poopypoo]

Your question regarding what graphics card to buy is a difficult one. I think the best solution is usually a hybrid technique. Stuff on that features list -- h.264 hardware decoding, inputs and outputs, surroundview, or what have you, are all useful and good to know about, but can probably be better explained by something like a B3D "technology overview". They usually make one of these when each new graphics chip is released. Using several of these and a price guide (i use anandtech's), you should get a good idea of what your budget and tech targets are. Next you'll need to select an actual product -- a complete card from a specific manufacturer. To do this you'll want to go to the hardware comparison sites. I recommend xbit, hexus, hardocp, and anand, but i advise you to thoroughly examine each and not be too swayed by their interpretations of each graph. Not only are they often filled with technical errors, but they usually overlook your specific needs -- what's the resolution you like to play at? Do you prefer 10x7 with AA or insist upon 12x10 without? Have a powerful CPU? Mind playing without shadows (most modern games are ok with a hell of a lot of graphics cards if you play without shadows or other lighting tricks). So on and so forth! If you check a wide range of sources, then you can also include lesser-known sites too, just be sure to stay balanced. I had a tough choice to make for my last card purchase. One company's card was slightly cheaper at that time, and offered almost-equal performance, but didn't perform as well in my favorite game, and didn't have some other cool features I wanted. So, I spent the extra $15.