Making a realistic game engine rendering system

[somodan]

Hi folks;

So far, i have seen lots of people small projects and even small game engines, the quality of these games are really basic and look like cartoonish in somehow.

Therefore i have a few questions:

1- How to make a game engine using Opengl to render and shows the trees and terrains and 3 models and water very realistic like the ones we see with CryEngine for example?

2- Any third party SDK provides such realistic tools to be used on my own game engine?

3- Making a rendering for a 3 model in Maya looks so professional, Is Maya built on top of OpenGl? or they have their own 3d APIs Library?
In my opinion, if OpenGl only renders the finished game in a very low quailty, then why should we use it? since today's games are extremely realistic?

Thanks!

[mhagain]

You've got some misunderstandings of what OpenGL is and what it does. Read this: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/does-linux-have-game,review-14534-2.html - the key point is: "superior graphics have more to do with the creative skills of the game developers than the choice of API".

OpenGL does not render a game in low quality, and nor does it render one in high quality. Your graphics card renders the game. All that OpenGL or D3D do is provide a means of telling your graphics card what to draw and where to draw it, your graphics card does the rest. So, if the source artwork and other game assets are low quality the end result will be low quality.

Unfortunately not many games use OpenGL in the PC space these days so myths get out. But OpenGL is capable of doing everything that D3D can do.

[somodan]

You've got some misunderstandings of what OpenGL is and what it does. Read this: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/does-linux-have-game,review-14534-2.html - the key point is: "superior graphics have more to do with the creative skills of the game developers than the choice of API".

OpenGL does not render a game in low quality, and nor does it render one in high quality. Your graphics card renders the game. All that OpenGL or D3D do is provide a means of telling your graphics card what to draw and where to draw it, your graphics card does the rest. So, if the source artwork and other game assets are low quality the end result will be low quality.

Unfortunately not many games use OpenGL in the PC space these days so myths get out. But OpenGL is capable of doing everything that D3D can do.

Thank you so much,

Your answer is so clear and i had hard time to figure this out.

Thanks again :)