Computer Graphics 266

Lab 0:

Render a simple animation using OpenGL or Blue Moon Rendering Tools.

Description:

The purpose of this lab was to acquaint the students with the rendering software of their choice. BMRT 2.6 was provided to the Computer Animation students by George Washington University for educational purposes.

I chose to use BMRT as my rendering tool partly because I wanted to learn more about RenderMan, partly because I wanted to use models, lights, and cameras exported from Maya to the .rib format, and partly because I wanted to play with the shaders. My application reads in a .rib file of a polygonal model and outputs a simple turntable animation as another .rib file, which can be rendered by either of BMRT's two renderers. For fun, I made several movies, varying the shaders and shading parameters.

Shaders:

Plastic: This was rendered using rgl, BRMT's OpenGL-based realtime previewer. The plastic appearance comes from the fact that rgl does not support any special shaders.

Satin: This was raytraced using BMRT's rendrib renderer and "roughmetal" shader.

Candy: This was raytraced using BMRT's rendrib renderer and "veinedmarble" shader.

Foil: This was raytraced using BMRT's rendrib renderer and a displacement shader.