Explain the differences between forward and deferred rendering pipelines in 3D computer graphics. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
Forward rendering calculates lighting for each object in the scene individually, while deferred rendering separates geometry and shading passes. In forward rendering, objects are rendered with their materials and lights applied simultaneously, leading to potential overdraw and performance issues when multiple lights affect a single pixel. Deferred rendering stores intermediate data (e.g., position, normal, albedo) in buffers during the geometry pass, then computes lighting using this data in the shading pass.
Advantages of forward rendering include simplicity, transparency support, and lower memory usage. However, it suffers from poor scalability with increasing light counts. Deferred rendering excels at handling many dynamic lights efficiently but requires more memory for storing intermediate data and struggles with transparent objects.
