External links: * http://www.povray.org/ |
When the pre-image (a wireframe sketch usually) is complete, rendering is used, which adds in textures, lights, bump mapping, and relative position to other objects. The result is a completed image the consumer or intended viewer sees.
For animations, several images (frames) must be rendered, and stitched together in a program capable of making an animation of this sort. Most 3-D image editing programs can do this.
There are a number of different phenomena that need to be simulated when rendering a scene:
All of these effects can be summed up in a single 'rendering equation' that contains very complex constants that in effect encode the scene.
All 3-D rendering software and hardware produces an approximation to a solution of the idealised rendering equation.
Methods of rendering include:
Rendering often takes place on a render farm.
The current state of the art in 3-D image description is the RenderMan? [scene description language]? designed at PIXAR?. (compare with simpler APIs such as OpenGL and DirectX)
Rendering software includes:
Fill in research - image based rendering, non photorealism, hardware assisted, etc.
External links: