Rendering for Beginners

Rendering for Beginners

Released October 2004
Publisher(s): Focal Press
ISBN: 9781136111259

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Book description

'Rendering for Beginners is bound to become a must-read for anyone interested in Pixar's RenderMan. Saty's experience as both RenderMan practitioner and RenderMan teacher gives him a unique and valuable perspective. I can't wait to add a copy to my own graphics library.'

Dana Batali, Director of RenderMan Development, Pixar Animation Studios

Whether you are an animator, artist or 2D illustrator looking to move to 3D rendering you will be amazed by what can be achieved with RenderMan. Saty Raghavachary offers a complete, non-technical introduction to RenderMan and rendering in general - finally a guide you don't need a math degree to follow!

Full of clear explanations and plenty of samples on the associated website - www.smartcg.com/tech/cg/books/RfB - for you to play with, this color guide will quickly get you up to speed with this powerful, professional program so you too can harness the power of the program to create top quality imagery.

The book features:
* Clear explanations of rendering concepts to get you up and running fast
* Extensive color illustrations to inspire you to make the most of your skills
* An associated website with numerous self-contained examples which you can download, reproduce, modify and learn from
* Comprehensive coverage of RenderMan's functionality to show you how to get the most out of this powerful renderer
* Coverage relevant for all versions of the package, including a section on global illumination introduced in Release 11, as well as the key, general rendering concepts

Pixar's award-winning RenderMan is one of the best renderers available and has been used to create visual effects for dozens of movies since 1985. It is also the renderer used to make blockbuster animated movies such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo. As the beautiful images in this book show, in addition to photoreal imagery you can also use it to create illustrations, visualizations, simulations of natural media and even abstract art!

Contents:
Rendering; RenderMan; RIB syntax; Geometric primitives; Transformations; Camera, output; Controls; Shading; What's next; Resources

Saty Raghavachary is a senior graphics software developer at DreamWorks Feature Animation. He has written software used in The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Shark Tale. He is also a part-time instructor at Gnomon School of Visual Effects, USA where he teaches RenderMan and MEL (Maya) programming.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Preface
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Dedication
  8. 1. Rendering
    1. 1.1 Artistic rendering
    2. 1.2 Computer graphical image synthesis
    3. 1.3 Representational styles
    4. 1.4 How a renderer works
    5. 1.5 Origins of 3D graphics, future directions
  9. 2. RenderMan
    1. 2.1 History, origins
    2. 2.2 Interface, implementations
    3. 2.3 How PRMan works
  10. 3. RIB syntax
    1. 3.1 Standards, interfaces and protocols
    2. 3.2 Formats for graphics description
    3. 3.3 RIB structure
  11. 4. Geometric primitives
    1. 4.1 Surfaces
    2. 4.2 Points
    3. 4.3 Curves
    4. 4.4 Polygons
    5. 4.5 Polygonal meshes
    6. 4.6 Subdivision surfaces
    7. 4.7 Patches
    8. 4.8 Spheres
    9. 4.9 Cylinders
    10. 4.10 Cones
    11. 4.11 Tori
    12. 4.12 Hyperboloids
    13. 4.13 Paraboloids
    14. 4.14 Disks
    15. 4.15 Blobbies
    16. 4.16 Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG)
    17. 4.17 Procedurals
    18. 4.18 Instancing
    19. 4.19 Reference geometry
    20. 4.20 Handedness, sides
  12. 5. Transformations
    1. 5.1 Coordinate systems
    2. 5.2 Translation
    3. 5.3 Scale
    4. 5.4 Rotation
    5. 5.5 Perspective
    6. 5.6 Skew
    7. 5.7 Rotation, scale
    8. 5.8 Translation, scale
    9. 5.9 Rotation, translation
    10. 5.10 Rotation, scale, translation
    11. 5.11 Concatenating transforms
    12. 5.12 Transformation hierarchies
    13. 5.13 Custom spaces
  13. 6. Camera, output
    1. 6.1 Proxy viewpoints
    2. 6.2 Camera angles, moves
    3. 6.3 Camera artifacts
    4. 6.4 Output: frame
    5. 6.5 Output: channels
    6. 6.6 Fun with cameras
  14. 7. Controls
    1. 7.1 Tradeoffs in rendering
    2. 7.2 Image-related controls
    3. 7.3 Object-related controls
    4. 7.4 REYES-related controls
    5. 7.5 Miscellaneous controls
  15. 8. Shading
    1. 8.1 Introduction
    2. 8.2 Using light shaders
    3. 8.3 Using other shaders
    4. 8.4 The RenderMan Shading Language (RSL)
    5. 8.5 Surface shaders
    6. 8.6 Displacement shaders
    7. 8.7 Light shaders
    8. 8.8 Volume shaders
    9. 8.9 Imager shaders
    10. 8.10 Global illumination
    11. 8.11 Non-photoreal rendering
    12. 8.12 Wrapup
  16. 9. What’s next?
    1. 9.1 Next steps for you
    2. 9.2 PRMan advances
    3. 9.3 Future directions for rendering
  17. 10. Resources
    1. 10.1 Books and papers
    2. 10.2 Courses
    3. 10.3 Web sites
    4. 10.4 Forums
    5. 10.5 Software documentation
    6. 10.6 Miscellaneous
  18. Index

Product information

  • Title: Rendering for Beginners
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: October 2004
  • Publisher(s): Focal Press
  • ISBN: 9781136111259