Forward Rendering

In Forward Rendering, each object is rendered in a ‘pass’ for each light that affects it. Therefore each object might be rendered multiple times depending upon how many lights are within range.

The advantages of this approach is that it can be very fast - meaning hardware requirements are lower than alternatives. Additionally, Forward Rendering offers us a wide range of custom ‘shading models’ and can handle transparency quickly. It also allows for the use of hardware techniques like ‘multi-sample anti-aliasing’ (MSAA) which are not available in other alternatives, such as Deferred Rendering which can have a great impact on image quality.

However, a significant disadvantage of the forward path is that we have to pay a render cost on a per-light basis. That is to say, the more lights affecting each object, the slower rendering performance will become. For some game types, with lots of lights, this may therefore be prohibitive. However if it is possible to manage light counts in your game, Forward Rendering can actually be a very fast solution.