IDS 252: Topics for January 27, 29, & 31, Spring 2014

• Animation Mentor Student Showcase - 2007

• Lab:

  • Review work for Lab 2: Introduction to Modeling, see evaluation sheet. See In Class Critique Instructions
  • Discuss and begin Lab 3: Lighting and Shading, see evaluation sheet.

• Begin Reading about Lighting and Shading:

  • Notes on Maya Shading and Rendering (pdf).
  • Exploring Storyboarding, Chp 7: Lighting
    
  • A Lighting Approach for Computer Graphics - SIGGRAPH 96 Course 30 (see section on Lighting for Computer Graphics, starting on p 43)
  • Film Analysis
    • Lighting. See Part 2: Mise-en-scene; Lighting
    • Color and Contrast. See Part 3: Cinematography; Quality ; color and contrast

• Misc links

  • Monet's Haystacks
  • Examples of 3-point lighting.
  • Bunny
  • Good source for textures: mayang

• Technical Topics on Materials/Shading, and Rendering

  • Types of Shaders: Lambert, Blinn, phong
  • Maps
  • Bump Mapping
  • Rendering Methods
    • Scanline (basic Maya renderer) - Fastest approach. Each polygon is projected point by point onto the view screen. A zbuffer is generally used to deal with objects that obscure other objects. Can't do reflection or refraction except as a hack. Can do shadows using a shadow map.
    • Ray Tracing: Much slower than scanline but produces much more realistic lighting. Best for highly reflective (as opposed to diffuse) surfaces. Does much better job on shadows than scanline.
    • Radiosity (Mental ray): A more advanced type of rendering that is good for diffuse surfaces. It is available in the mental-ray renderer in Maya. Can be very slow.
  • Anti-aliasing, Hypergraph
  • Shadows - Shadow maps vs ray traced shadows.

• Using Rigged Characters, e.g. bloke