Baking, Pixel and Render - Game Developers Network

From Concept to Completion: Navigating the Game Art Production Pipeline

iXie gaming

MARCH 28, 2025

A well-defined art style, whether realistic, stylized, or pixel-based, guides asset complexity, rendering performance, and development timelines. Why it matters: Efficient UV mapping and normal map baking allow high-detail textures to be applied to low-poly models, preserving visual fidelity without unnecessary computational overhead.

Concepts

Concepts Art Texture Asset

VFX Breakdown Process From Concept to Final Render

Filmustage

JANUARY 16, 2025

Grab your virtual toolkit - we're about to journey through the wonderful world where imagination dances with pixels, and dreams become digital reality. Buckle up, future VFX virtuoso - this ride through the pixels is about to get exciting! It's not just the fancy pixels or mind-bending effects - it's the stories they tell!

Render

Render Concepts Pixel Scripting

Godot 3's renderer design explained

Mircosoft Game Dev

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Godot uses a considerably different approach to rendering (and rendering abstraction) than other, popular, game engines. This document was written in hopes to find more developers that would like to help us write rendering code, as it explains the overall design. Running the whole graphics rendering in a separate thread.

Render

Render Shaders Texture Engineering

NVIDIA Research: Learning and Rendering Dynamic Global Illumination with One Tiny Neural Network in Real-Time

Nvidia

JUNE 22, 2021

This is a challenging task, even in cinematic rendering, because it is difficult to find all the paths of light that contribute meaningfully to an image. Solving this problem through brute force requires hundreds, sometimes thousands of paths per pixel, but this is far too expensive for real-time rendering.

Ray Tracing

Ray Tracing Render Technology Baking

Q&A: Real-Time Ray Tracing in a Cinematic Scene

Nvidia

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Back then, cinematic-quality rendering required computer farms to slowly bake every frame. Back then, cinematic-quality rendering required computer farms to slowly bake every frame overnight—a painstaking process. Path tracing and ray tracing are both rendering techniques, but they have key differences.

Ray Tracing

Ray Tracing Cinematics Render Baking

Shaping the Future of Graphics with NVIDIA Technologies in Unreal Engine 5

Nvidia

APRIL 5, 2022

DLSS uses advanced AI rendering to produce image quality comparable to native resolution, and in some cases even better quality, while only conventionally rendering a fraction of the pixels. Balancing quality and performance is done by controlling the game’s internal rendering resolution. Courtesy of JSFILMZ.

Ray Tracing

Ray Tracing Technology Engine Engineering

Try NVIDIA Game Development SDKs in the Interactive RTX Technology Showcase

Nvidia

APRIL 14, 2021

RTX Global Illumination provides scalable solutions to compute multi-bounce indirect lighting without bake times, light leaks, or expensive per-frame costs. NVIDIA Real-Time Denoiser is a spatio-temporal API agnostic denoising library that’s designed to work with low ray per pixel signals.

Ray Tracing

Ray Tracing Technology Game Developer Game Development

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 2

Mircosoft Game Dev

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

New option to snapping 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions (new in 3.2.4 Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport ( GH-42006 ). Rendering: Disable lights for objects with baked lighting ( GH-41629 ). Physics: Various bug fixes for 2D and 3D.

Beta

Beta Dev Bug Render

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 3

Mircosoft Game Dev

NOVEMBER 27, 2020

New option to snap 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions. Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport ( GH-42006 ). Rendering: Disable lights for objects with baked lighting ( GH-41629 ). YSort: Make rendering order more deterministic ( GH-42375 ).

Beta

Beta Dev Bug Build

2024 Cherry-picks

Mircosoft Game Dev

JANUARY 28, 2025

Until Then Nominated for a plethora of awards, the visual novel Until Then tells the emotional story of the highschooler Mark in polished pixel art. This years poll had more responses than ever before, once again proving the incredible growth the Godot community is experiencing. July The Godot robot plushies took the internet by storm.

Engineering

Engineering Engine Mechanics Co-op

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 1

Mircosoft Game Dev

JANUARY 28, 2021

New option to snap 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions. New dynamic BVH for rendering and the GodotPhysics backends. Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport ( GH-42006 ). Rendering: Disable lights for objects with baked lighting ( GH-41629 ).

Render

Render Bug Build Beta

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 4

Mircosoft Game Dev

DECEMBER 11, 2020

see recent devblogs on GDScript typed instructions , Complex Text Layout , Tiles editor , documentation , and 2D rendering improvements !), New option to snap 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions. Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport ( GH-42006 ).

Beta

Beta Dev Bug Render

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 6

Mircosoft Game Dev

JANUARY 16, 2021

New dynamic BVH for rendering and the GodotPhysics backends, which should fix some issues and improve performance significantly in games using a high number of dynamic objects. In this beta, the dynamic BVH is the default option for both physics and rendering. New dynamic BVH for rendering and the GodotPhysics backends (new in beta 6).

Beta

Beta Dev Collision Render

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 5

Mircosoft Game Dev

JANUARY 7, 2021

New option to snap 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions. Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport ( GH-42006 ). Rendering: Disable lights for objects with baked lighting ( GH-41629 ). YSort: Make rendering order more deterministic ( GH-42375 ).

Beta

Beta Dev Bug Build

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 2

Mircosoft Game Dev

FEBRUARY 12, 2021

New option to snap 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions. New dynamic BVH for rendering and the GodotPhysics backends. Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport ( GH-42006 ). Rendering: Disable lights for objects with baked lighting ( GH-41629 ).

Render

Render Build Bug Collision

Godot 3.3 has arrived, with a focus on optimization and reliability

Mircosoft Game Dev

APRIL 21, 2021

in January 2020, we switched the development focus towards the upcoming Godot 4.0 , which is a major, compatibility-breaking rewrite of the engine's core and rendering. Dynamic BVH for rendering and GodotPhysics. Rendering: Unified 2D batching. More rendering improvements. Dynamic BVH for rendering and GodotPhysics.

Collision

Collision Lightmap Baking Render

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 4

Mircosoft Game Dev

MARCH 9, 2021

New option to snap 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions. Note that the project settings from the rendering/quality/2d section have now been moved to rendering/2d , so if you used any of those, you will need to re-enable them under the new section in 3.2.4. New CPU lightmapper.

Render

Render Collision Build Bug

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 3

Mircosoft Game Dev

FEBRUARY 23, 2021

New option to snap 2D transforms to whole coordinates , helps prevent jitter on pixel art camera motions. New dynamic BVH for rendering and the GodotPhysics backends. GLES2: Improve PCF13 shadow rendering by using a soft PCF filter ( GH-46301 ). Rendering: Add fast approximate antialiasing (FXAA) to Viewport ( GH-42006 ).

Render

Render Build Bug Editing

Leveling Up Graphics and Performance with RTX, DLSS and Reflex at NVIDIA GTC

Nvidia

APRIL 14, 2021

RTXDI makes this possible while rendering in real time. RTX Global Illumination (RTXGI) Leveraging the power of ray tracing, the RTX Global Illumination (RTXGI) SDK provides scalable solutions to compute multi-bounce indirect lighting without bake times, light leaks, or expensive per-frame costs. Times Square billboards. Version 1.1.30

Ray Tracing

Ray Tracing Graphics Render Technology

Release candidate: Godot 3.4 RC 1

Mircosoft Game Dev

OCTOBER 19, 2021

Notable changes are in-editor class reference translations (so far Chinese (Simplified), Spanish, and some French), some new rendering features (high quality glow mode, 3D point light attenuation option), and a number of C# marshalling fixes. Rendering: Rooms and portals-based occlusion culling ( GH-46130 ).

Mesh

Mesh Render Shaders Animation

Release candidate: Godot 3.4 RC 2

Mircosoft Game Dev

OCTOBER 27, 2021

GLES3 renderer). Rendering: Rooms and portals-based occlusion culling ( GH-46130 ). Rendering: Add a new high quality tonemapper: ACES Fitted ( GH-52477 ). Rendering: Fixes depth sorting of meshes with transparent textures ( GH-50721 ). Rendering: Add soft shadows to the CPU lightmapper ( GH-50184 ). Highlights.

Mesh

Mesh Render Shaders Animation

Release candidate: Godot 3.4 RC 3

Mircosoft Game Dev

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

GLES3 renderer). Rendering: Rooms and portals-based occlusion culling ( GH-46130 ). Rendering: Add a new high quality tonemapper: ACES Fitted ( GH-52477 ). Rendering: Fixes depth sorting of meshes with transparent textures ( GH-50721 ). Rendering: Add soft shadows to the CPU lightmapper ( GH-50184 ). Highlights.

Mesh

Mesh Render Shaders Animation

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.4 beta 6

Mircosoft Game Dev

OCTOBER 6, 2021

Rendering: Rooms and portals-based occlusion culling ( GH-46130 ). Rendering: Add a new high quality tonemapper: ACES Fitted ( GH-52477 ). Rendering: Fixes depth sorting of meshes with transparent textures ( GH-50721 ). Rendering: Add soft shadows to the CPU lightmapper ( GH-50184 ). In-depth documentation is available.

Beta

Beta Dev Mesh Render

Setting the Mood: Exploring Lighting and Mood in Game Art

iXie gaming

JULY 19, 2024

Faster but less realistic, it determines colors based on how much of each pixel is covered by light. Baked Lighting. Realistic Lighting In realistic games, lighting mimics real-world behavior using accurate physics and rendering. Rasterization. Five Advanced Lighting Techniques Global Illumination (GI). Voxel Cone Tracing.

Art

Art Games Texture Culling

Cocos Creator 3.8 Post-Process Shader Writing (2/2) Advanced

Cocos

AUGUST 16, 2023

Preface In the last article , Kylin shared how to add your own post-effect Shader in the custom render pipeline in Cocos Creator 3.8. Simply put, Gaussian blur takes every pixel on an image and processes it with the following process. Final pixel value = sum of all (pixels * weights). name : the effect’s name.

Shaders

Shaders Writing Pixel Render

Game Developers Network

From Concept to Completion: Navigating the Game Art Production Pipeline

VFX Breakdown Process From Concept to Final Render

Trending Sources

Godot 3's renderer design explained

NVIDIA Research: Learning and Rendering Dynamic Global Illumination with One Tiny Neural Network in Real-Time

Q&A: Real-Time Ray Tracing in a Cinematic Scene

Shaping the Future of Graphics with NVIDIA Technologies in Unreal Engine 5

Try NVIDIA Game Development SDKs in the Interactive RTX Technology Showcase

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 2

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 3

2024 Cherry-picks

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 1

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 4

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 6

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.2.4 beta 5

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 2

Godot 3.3 has arrived, with a focus on optimization and reliability

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 4

Release candidate: Godot 3.2.4 RC 3

Leveling Up Graphics and Performance with RTX, DLSS and Reflex at NVIDIA GTC

Release candidate: Godot 3.4 RC 1

Release candidate: Godot 3.4 RC 2

Release candidate: Godot 3.4 RC 3

Dev snapshot: Godot 3.4 beta 6

Setting the Mood: Exploring Lighting and Mood in Game Art

Cocos Creator 3.8 Post-Process Shader Writing (2/2) Advanced

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