Summary

Real-world lighting effects are key to the way we perceive the environment around us, and simulated lighting effects add realism to 3D rendering. The traditional OpenGL ES vertex lighting simulation combined with materials offers wide-ranging configuration options but also suffers from limitations and relatively poor performance with embedded GPUs. Textures almost always produce higher quality rendered results than OpenGL ES materials. When textures are being used, it’s possible to include some lighting effects in the textures and avoid the OpenGL ES lighting simulation entirely. Per-fragment lighting techniques are possible with all hardware that runs iOS and will become more common as memory, processor, and tools support improve.