Renderer Warmp-Up Exercise
CS 7490, Spring 2010
Project Due Date: Wednesday, February 17
The purpose of this project is for you to learn a public-domain renderer. In addition,
you will be reporting what you learn of this renderer back to your classmates by
means of a web page that you create.
Here are the steps to take:
1) Download and install the renderer on an appropriate computer.
2) Using example scenes from the authors of the renderer code (or the community
of users), create one or more images with the renderer.
3) Create your own scene and render it. The scene can be one that you made
entirely or one that you put together using models that were created by others.
Try to put together a scene that exercises various aspects of the renderer, such
as transparency, shadows, global illumination, or any other important
components of the renderer's capabilities.
4) Create a web page that reports what you learned about the renderer.
The Web Page
Here are the six items you should include on your web page:
1) Give the renderer name, pointers to the software, and pointers to documentation
and/or tutorials. Say whether the source code is available and what OS it runs under.
2) Give a description of the style of renderer this is. Is it a ray tracer, scan converter,
radiosity solver, volume renderer or something else? Does it perform any kind
of global illumination?
3) Describe the kinds of models and/or data that the program can import and render from.
Polygon meshes? Volume data? Subdivision surfaces? Does the program have a shading
language? Does it use the RenderMan API?
4) Show the example scene that you rendered. Tell how long it took to render.
5) Show your own scene, and give rendering times. Describe what the process of creating
this example was like. Was it easy to set up the scene? How difficult was it to import or
create models? Give a link to another page that gives the models, the parameters and/or the text scene
description files (if any) that you used to specify your scene. This page should include
enough information that another person could re-create your rendered image.
6) Give a detailed description of what you liked and did not like about the renderer.
Was it easy to use? Was it easy to tune parameters to get the results you wanted? Was
the documentation good? Would you recommend this renderer to others? Please
include here anything else that you think would be useful for other people who are
considering using this renderer.