From: bergen@seas.gwu.edu (Daria Bergen) Subject: Re: TECH/PHIL: World Descriptions Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1992 05:34:24 GMT Organization: George Washington University In article broehl@sunee.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) writes: >Hmm... I'm only slightly familiar with RenderMan. >I'll check locally for info; is there a quick summary of it out on the net >anywhere? I'm not aware of any summary available on the net. The reference I have is _The RenderMan Companion_ by Steve Upstill (ISBN 0-201-50868-0). While this is a scene description language explicitly written for photorealistic rendering, I feel one may be able to apply many of the attributes they have defined to virtual worlds. For example, you previous mentioned what type of attributes should light sources have. Within Renderman you can define the following light source shaders: Ambient Light (distributed uniformly, all direction): parameters: intensity, color Distant Lights (distributed uniformly, one direction): parameters: intensity, color, from, to Point Lights (distributed uniformly, falls off with distance^2): parameters: intensity, color, from Spot Lights (has position & direction, falls off exponentially with angle from center of the cone): parameters: intensity, color, from, to, coneangle, conedeltaangle, beamdistribution Although RenderMan is meant to be used for animation, one might be able to infer standard attributes which could be applicable to virtual worlds (atmosphere effects, image based texture maps, procedural texture maps, material properties, etc). I know we're a long way from worrying about "Photorealisctic VR" but if someone has the horsepower, we should allow them to use it. Just a thought. -- Daria -- Daria Bergen | The George Washington University | Naval Research Lab bergen@seas.gwu.edu | bergen@enews.nrl.navy.mil 703-271-5473 | 202-404-6814