Computing final images from 3D scene data including geometry, materials, and lighting.
Definition
Rendering is the process of calculating an image from 3D data. From simple rasterization to physically accurate path tracing – the final step in the CGI pipeline.
Practical Application
Offline rendering for film VFX: Arnold, RenderMan, V-Ray. Real-time for games and ICVFX: Unreal, Unity. Render farms with thousands of cores for production.
Technical Details
Geometry Processing → Shading → Integration → Output. CPU vs GPU rendering. Distributed rendering on farms. AOVs (Arbitrary Output Variables) for compositing flexibility. EXR as the standard format.