Thursday Night Live | Melody Lane

Multipass 3D Rendering

3D renderings tend to be clean-very clean. Crisp edges, sharp drop-offs, and crystal-clear materials are the trademarks of computer-generated imagery. Unfortunately, this is not always the way a scene would play out in real life, and often is not the most beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. Part of this is due to the lack of a fresnel effect.

3D Rendering And Animation Industry Matures

As the 3D rendering and animation industry matures, raytracers are becoming increasingly speedy. So speedy, in fact, that some 3D apps only offer raytracing. Raytracing does have a drawback, though; it does not calculate any light that may be bouncing between objects.

Oversampling And 3D

When your computer renders, it essentially takes colored bits of information and arranges them so that the whole looks like a cohesive image. As seen earlier, figures are comprised of small pixels that can be thought of as tiles. In this way, bitmapped figures are a bit like the Byzantine mosaics.

Faking 3D Radiosity

Through Raytracing, Radiosity creates some truly beautiful renderings; however, the time involved often makes true radiosity rendered images hardly worth the wait. To further complicate the radiosity dilemma, some programs do not have any radiosity capabilities (3D application, for example).

3D Compositing And Fresnel Effect

Usually the fresnel effect causes images to soften around the edge of the reflective surface. So, save a copy of the scene, and then delete all textures. Make one new texture with no channels activated except the color channel. Make the color channel 100% white and apply it to every object in the scene. Now, delete all light sources and create one new point light that is placed at the same location as your camera.