what disciplines may help working with renderers?

[neuromancer1978]

I'm kind of more an artist than a scientific person, but it's always interesting to understand render engines deeper to get more control. So I'm not good at maths or algebra, I just never thought I may need this. Often it's frustrating I can't read the manuals with mathematical or other jargon.
So what disciplines may help working with render engines better?
To what depth I need to study them?
Or may it be not worth of it as it takes many years, so it's just for very tightly specialising people?

I am in the same boat. I am more of an artist myself, have never been good at math or algebra. Programming is a mystery to me, however I can understand it enough to follow it if it's already written. However I have found that Renderman, while being a very technical renderer, is also very easy to learn IF you take the time to read up about it and most importantly for artists - to use it and experiment with it.

I started to use Renderman renderers back in 2003 and I had no idea how to use it or anything. Over time though I started to learn it by using it more and more, to the extent that a few years ago I bought 2 books written for them. I continued to play with it, to learn it - all without really getting into the code or mathematics about it. Understanding the concept more than the execution if you will.

But I have never taken a class for Renderman.

It really depends on how much you want to learn about them, I only give Renderman as an example of my particular interest. I really enjoy using Renderman more than any other renderer. I have learned quite a bit but it's taken years to do this and to date I still haven't gotten employed in the industry. I have gotten some attention though from this though heh such as Larry Grtitz and Saty Raghavachary.... so who knows? Either way it really depends on your willingness to devote a lot of time to it.

Like I said I am not a math geek - I am an artist and still can't handle algebra haha!

[Dreamdealer2099]

Hello!


I think you should specify what excacty "working with render engines better" means.I mean if you want to be able to eliminate various artifacts or to know how to achieve one or another effect in your renders,i don't think that comprehensive knowledge of render kernel is necessary.On the other hand,if you want to write shaders or various rendering post-srcipts or plug-ins,in this case you will have to know exactly what's goin' on "under the hood" of your renderer.So,i think it depends on what you want to do.

[mister3d]

Thank you neuromancer1978 for the input, I will try to explain what I mean below.
Hello Aleksander. First of all, I'm not about to learn it right away, but in the perspective, it's always interesting to have a room to grow and develop. But it's a technical field, so definitely I leave it to the final step, if I ever achieve it.
I don't see the point in learning mathematics or language just to get rid of artifacts. At least as I work with raytracers for now, it's not that complicated usually. But still, reading help files of mental ray, for example, sometimes is not very comprehensible to me. The functions are described in a language that I don't have a clue about. For example:
material "volsurf" opaque # material for surfaces of volume
"transmat" ()
shadow "transmat" ()
photon "transmat_photon" ()
volume "parti_volume" (
"scatter" 0.05 0.05 0.05,
"extinction" 0.05,
"lights" ["arealight-i"]
)
photonvol "parti_volume_photon" (
"scatter" 0.05 0.05 0.05,
"extinction" 0.05
)
end material

This says nothing to me. But it should be, ideally I guess.

I never worked or touched renderman, but maybe within several years I will get interest in it, just to get something more complex to work with, to get your brain working.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.