Essential Guide to RenderMan® Shading Plugin Development: Understanding Bxdfs

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023

B. E. HollisterEssential Guide to RenderMan® Shading Plugin Developmenthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9392-8_5

5. The RenderMan (Rix) API

Brad E. Hollister¹  

(1)

Carson, CA, USA

 

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the core header files (interfaces) and classes involved in writing Bxdf shader plugins. Topics include RixShadingContext, RixShadingPlugin, RixBxdf, and the utility functions (from RixShadingUtils.h). We draw parallels between the Rix API and built-in globals and utility functions from RSL.

It is important to realize that the Rix API is larger than we present here. Only a subset of its classes directly relate to writing Bxdf plugins. We ...