Wolfgang Engel

Last updated
Wolfgang Engel
OccupationWriter and designer
Notable work
ShaderX, GPU Pro, and GPU Zen books series
TitleCEO of Confetti

Wolfgang Engel is a videogame designer. He is the founder and CEO of Confetti. Previously he also worked as the Lead Graphics Programmer for Rockstar Games. He is also the founder and editor of ShaderX and GPU books series.

Contents

Career

As a developer, Engel has developed videogames in addition to games for the television series Wetten, dass..? . [1] He was the Lead Graphics Programmer at Rockstar Games, where he led the graphics development of the RAGE engine. During his time at Rockstar he contributed to Rockstar Games franchises including Midnight Club , Red Dead Redemption , and Grand Theft Auto . [2] At that time Engel also developed the Oolong gaming engine for iPhone, that eventually shipped about a hundred games. [3] In 2008 Engel introduced light pre-pass rendering as a method of deferred shading variant in the development of videogame graphics, [4] [5] [6] and is known as an expert in shader programming. [7]

Engel then founded Confetti Interactive and Confetti Games in 2009, [8] [9] where he serves as CEO.[ citation needed ] Confetti is a think-tank for real-time graphics research in the videogame and movie industry, graphics tools developer, and programming services company. Tools Engel has helped develop for the company include Aura, a global illumination system; Ephemeris, a skybox/skydome system; and PixelPuzzle, a Post FX pipeline system. [8] [10] As a part of his role with Confetti, Engel works with external clients, and provides consultations to other game developers. Confetti contributed to games including Tomb Raider , Battlefield 4 , Murdered Soul Suspect , Star Citizen , Dirt 4 , Vainglory , Transistor, Call of Duty Black Ops 3 , Battlefield 1 , Mafia 3 , Quake Champions , and Phyre . [11]

Writing

Engel has written or edited more than 20 books on graphics software development in use by the videogame industry, in line with contemporary techniques and practices. [12] The book series he has authored include the ShaderX, GPU Pro, and GPU Zen books series. [11] The ShaderX4 book was awarded the Game Developer Front Line prize in 2006.[ citation needed ] His books have also included edited collections of pieces by other industry experts and designers, [13] and Engel has also served as technical editor to books published by other authors on the same subject matter. [14] [15] Engel also writes articles for developer magazines and game tutorials for videogame-oriented websites. [1] Engel has also spoken at public conferences regarding various techniques in videogame creation [16] and is a faculty member and advisor to the Academy of Game Entertainment Technology. [1]

Related Research Articles

DirectX Collection of multimedia related APIs on Microsoft platforms

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, and so forth. The name DirectX was coined as a shorthand term for all of these APIs and soon became the name of the collection. When Microsoft later set out to develop a gaming console, the X was used as the basis of the name Xbox to indicate that the console was based on DirectX technology. The X initial has been carried forward in the naming of APIs designed for the Xbox such as XInput and the Cross-platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT), while the DirectX pattern has been continued for Windows APIs such as Direct2D and DirectWrite.

Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware acceleration if it is available on the graphics card, allowing for hardware acceleration of the entire 3D rendering pipeline or even only partial acceleration. Direct3D exposes the advanced graphics capabilities of 3D graphics hardware, including Z-buffering, W-buffering, stencil buffering, spatial anti-aliasing, alpha blending, color blending, mipmapping, texture blending, clipping, culling, atmospheric effects, perspective-correct texture mapping, programmable HLSL shaders and effects. Integration with other DirectX technologies enables Direct3D to deliver such features as video mapping, hardware 3D rendering in 2D overlay planes, and even sprites, providing the use of 2D and 3D graphics in interactive media ties.

Game engine Software-development environment designed for building video games

A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games, and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software industry.

Graphics processing unit Specialized electronic circuit; graphics accelerator

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles.

Microsoft XNA Freeware set of tools by Microsoft

Microsoft XNA is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio can help develop XNA games. The XNA toolset was announced on March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006.

Game programming, a subset of game development, is the software development of video games. Game programming requires substantial skill in software engineering and computer programming in a given language, as well as specialization in one or more of the following areas: simulation, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, physics, audio programming, and input. For massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), knowledge of additional areas such as network programming and database programming are required. Though often engaged in by professional game programmers, some may program games as a hobby.

Direct3D and OpenGL are competing application programming interfaces (APIs) which can be used in applications to render 2D and 3D computer graphics. As of 2005, graphics processing units (GPUs) almost always implement one version of both of these APIs. Examples include: DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2 circa 2004; DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3 circa 2008; and most recently, DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4 circa 2011. GPUs that support more recent versions of the standards are backward compatible with applications that use the older standards; for example, one can run older DirectX 9 games on a more recent DirectX 11-certified GPU.

Shader Type of program in a graphical processing unit (GPU)

In computer graphics, a shader is a type of computer program originally used for shading in 3D scenes. They now perform a variety of specialized functions in various fields within the category of computer graphics special effects, or else do video post-processing unrelated to shading, or even perform functions unrelated to graphics.

Torque Game Engine, or TGE, is an open-source cross-platform 3D computer game engine, developed by GarageGames and actively maintained under the current versions Torque 3D as well as Torque 2D. It was originally developed by Dynamix for the 2001 first-person shooter Tribes 2. In September 2012, GarageGames released Torque 3D as open-source software under the MIT License.

Non-photorealistic rendering

Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art, in contrast to traditional computer graphics, which focuses on photorealism. NPR is inspired by other artistic modes such as painting, drawing, technical illustration, and animated cartoons. NPR has appeared in movies and video games in the form of cel-shaded animation as well as in scientific visualization, architectural illustration and experimental animation.

A shading language is a graphics programming language adapted to programming shader effects. Such language forms usually consist of special data types, like "vector", "matrix", "color" and "normal". Due to the variety of target markets for 3D computer graphics, different shading languages have been developed.

High-dynamic-range rendering Rendering of computer graphics scenes by using lighting calculations done in high-dynamic-range

High-dynamic-range rendering, also known as high-dynamic-range lighting, is the rendering of computer graphics scenes by using lighting calculations done in high dynamic range (HDR). This allows preservation of details that may be lost due to limiting contrast ratios. Video games and computer-generated movies and special effects benefit from this as it creates more realistic scenes than with more simplistic lighting models.

Tiled rendering is the process of subdividing a computer graphics image by a regular grid in optical space and rendering each section of the grid, or tile, separately. The advantage to this design is that the amount of memory and bandwidth is reduced compared to immediate mode rendering systems that draw the entire frame at once. This has made tile rendering systems particularly common for low-power handheld device use. Tiled rendering is sometimes known as a "sort middle" architecture, because it performs the sorting of the geometry in the middle of the graphics pipeline instead of near the end.

Deferred shading Screen-space shading technique

In the field of 3D computer graphics, deferred shading is a screen-space shading technique that is performed on a second rendering pass, after the vertex and pixel shaders are rendered. It was first suggested by Michael Deering in 1988.

Xbox Live Indie Games are video games created by individual developers or small teams of developers released on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox 360. The games were developed using Microsoft XNA, and developed by one or more independent developers that are registered with App Hub. Unlike Xbox Live Arcade titles, these were generally only tested within the local creator community, had much lower costs of production, and generally were less expensive to purchase. The service was released to widespread use alongside the New Xbox Experience, and as of November 2014, over 3,300 games have been released on the service, many receiving media attention. All Indie Games currently require the user to be logged into their Xbox Live account to initiate the start-up of each game. Indie Games were not available in Australia, due to the requirement for all games to be rated by the Australian Classification Board, and the prohibitive expenses involved. The Xbox Live Indie Games program did not continue with the release of the Xbox One, and the marketplace for these games was shuttered in October 7, 2017.

Computer graphics Graphics created using computers

Computer graphics deals with generating images with the aid of computers. Today, computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. A great deal of specialized hardware and software has been developed, with the displays of most devices being driven by computer graphics hardware. It is a vast and recently developed area of computer science. The phrase was coined in 1960 by computer graphics researchers Verne Hudson and William Fetter of Boeing. It is often abbreviated as CG, or typically in the context of film as computer generated imagery (CGI). The non-artistic aspects of computer graphics are the subject of computer science research.

Microsoft XNA Game Studio Integrated development environment

Microsoft XNA Game Studio is a discontinued integrated development environment (IDE) for building video games on the Microsoft XNA platform. Such video games can run on Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone and the Zune. XNA Game Studio is targeted at hobbyists and experienced programmers, and is primarily used to develop 2D and 3D video games for various Microsoft platforms. XNA games can be published for the Xbox 360 using an XNA Creator's Club membership, that has a yearly fee.

MonoGame is a free and open source C# framework used by game developers to make games for multiple platforms and other systems. It is also used to make Windows and Windows Phone games run on other systems. It supports iOS, Android, macOS, tvOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It implements the Microsoft XNA 4 application programming interface (API). It has been used for several games, including Bastion and Fez.

In computing, Stage3D is an Adobe Flash Player API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration, within Flash games and applications. Flash Player or AIR applications written in ActionScript 3 may use Stage3D to render 3D graphics, and such applications run natively on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple iOS and Google Android. Stage3D is similar in purpose and design to WebGL.

Metal (API) iOS, macOS, and tvOS graphics rendering API

Metal is a low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader API created by Apple. It debuted in iOS 8. Metal combines functions similar to OpenGL and OpenCL in one API. It is intended to improve performance by offering low-level access to the GPU hardware for apps on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS. It can be compared to low-level APIs on other platforms such as Vulkan and DirectX 12.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Sanchez-crespo, Daniel; Dalmau, Daniel Sánchez-Crespo (6 June 2018). Core Techniques and Algorithms in Game Programming. New Riders. ISBN   9780131020092 – via Google Books.
  2. ↑ Arif, Fahad (3 June 2014). "Xbox One eSRAM is Very Fast Memory, Proper Use Can Result Into Significant Performance/Speed Gains".
  3. ↑ "8 Sensational iPhone Game Engines (2D and 3D)". 14 July 2009.
  4. ↑ Lake, Adam (6 June 2018). Game Programming Gems 8. Course Technology. ISBN   9781435457713 – via Google Books.
  5. ↑ McShaffry, Mike (25 June 2014). Game Coding Complete. Course Technology PTR. ISBN   9781133776581 – via Google Books.
  6. ↑ Duggan, Michael (16 July 2010). Torque for Teens. Course Technology. ISBN   9781435456433 – via Google Books.
  7. ↑ Nitschke, Benjamin (22 May 2007). Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   9780470173770 – via Google Books.
  8. 1 2 "Confetti Interactive: Creating Graphics For Games and Entertainment". gamesbusinessreview.com.
  9. ↑ Arif, Fahad (13 June 2014). "PS4 API is Something That Graphics Programmers Love - Specific GPU Optimizations Will Improve Performance".
  10. ↑ "Wolfgang Engel Video Game Credits - MobyGames". MobyGames.
  11. 1 2 "The Big Interview: Confetti Interactive On Video Game Lighting, Graphics Rendering And More « Video Game News, Reviews, Walkthroughs And Guides – GamingBolt". gamingbolt.com.
  12. ↑ Madhav, Sanjay (6 March 2018). Game Programming in C++: Creating 3D Games. Addison-Wesley Professional. ISBN   9780134597317 – via Google Books.
  13. ↑ Engel, Wolfgang (28 July 2015). GPU Pro 6: Advanced Rendering Techniques. CRC Press. ISBN   9781482264623 – via Google Books.
  14. ↑ St-Laurent, Sebastien (6 June 2018). The Complete Effect and HLSL Guide. Paradoxal Press. ISBN   9780976613213 – via Google Books.
  15. ↑ Leiterman, James (6 June 2018). Learn Vertex and Pixel Shader Programming with DirectX 9. Wordware Publishing, Inc. ISBN   9781556222870 – via Google Books.
  16. ↑ Nitschke, Benjamin (22 May 2007). Professional XNA Game Programming: For Xbox 360 and Windows. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   9780470173770 – via Google Books.
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