CMSC 435/634: Introduction to Computer Graphics
Assignment 1
Simple Scene
Due February 12, 2002
The Assignment
Use 3Delight (a free Renderman compliant renderer) to model and render
a bowl full of marbles on a tabletop. The table should be square,
36"x36". You needn't show the table legs. The bowl can be
any size or shape you want, but should be sitting on the table
top. The marbles should be sizes ranging from 0.5" to 1.5"
in diameter. The table, bowl and marbles can be made of any material
you choose, but should be made of different materials. Make them as
realistic as possible. Your scene should be illuminated by specific
lights (i.e. don't use a constant surface or ambient light
source). Select a viewpoint that shows the scene from an oblique angle
(ie. not aligned with any of the coordinate axes), and allows us to
see all three elements: table, bowl and marbles.
Using 3Delight
Read Renderman
for Poets (for a very brief introduction to Renderman) and 3Delight User's
Manual (for a information on running the 3Delight programs). You
may also find chapters 1-3 of The Renderman Companion (on reserve in
the library) and the Renderman Specification (linked off the course
web page) to be useful. 3Delight runs on a variety of platforms
(including PCs running Linux, Windows, Mac OS X). 3Delight for linux
is currently installed on linux.gl, rooted at
~olano/public/435/3delight.
Your development cycle will go something like this:
unsetenv DELIGHT
source ~olano/public/435/3delight/.3delight_csh (ignore ldconfig messages if you see them)
repeat
edit marbles.c
make marbles.tif (you'll find a sample Makefile in ~olano/public/435/assn1)
display marbles.tif (full path == /usr/local/bin/display)
until done
Strategy
Incremental development will probably result in the most efficient use
of your time. For example, first try to get your program to draw a
single flat square for the table. Once that's working to your
satisfaction, choose a shape for the bowl and position it on top of
the table. When both table and bowl are working, add the marbles. Once
you've got the basic setup, keep refining to make it more realistic
until you're satisfied or you run out of time (whichever comes first).
Some debugging tips
-
If your image is blank, check the camera position and direction. It
may be pointing away from your scene.
-
If some primitives are missing, check their orientation (the order in
which you have specified the vertices). Polygons are transparent when
viewed from behind.
-
If some primitives are still missing, check the lighting. Surfaces on
which no light falls will be black, just like the default background.
-
If you're having trouble keeping everything straight, give each piece
a different color until you've got them behaving properly. Then you
can change the colors to whatever you want.
What to turn in
Turn in this assignment electronically as 'cs435
Proj1' using the submit mechanism:
submit cs435 Proj1 [files...]
Submit a RIB file, the C program which generates it, and the image it
creates. If you modified the Makefile, submit that as well (however,
we must be able to run your submission on the gl systems to
grade it). Your comments should include information about which
computer platform (HW and OS) you developed your program on.
Additional comments may help your grade in cases where your program
does not operate entirely correctly (since they can give me insight
into what you were trying to do). In any case, your programs are
expected to be robust and easy to understand.
Working at home
If possible, don't. I test things out on the
university computers and may or may not be able to help you if things
don't work right for you at home. If you do work at home, your final
submitted version must be able to run on the gl machines and must be
electronically submitted there.
If you absolutely must work at home, here are some things you may
try:
- Image display at home
- Instead of "display marbles.tif", copy marbles.tif to your home
machine and display it there. TIFF image viewers exist for every
platform out there (even windows). If you cannot find a working TIFF
viewer, you can convert to another format on the gl machines:
convert marbles.tif marbles.jpg
will convert from TIFF to JPEG. Convert keys off of the file extension
and understands a huge number of image file formats. Two suggestions
for free viewers that run on many platforms (including windows and
linux) are GIMP (from www.gimp.org) and ImageMagick display (from
www.imagemagick.org). GIMP is a full-featured image editor (and a
great program) that happens to also be able to read and write many
image formats. ImageMagick is a set of simpler tools for image display
and conversion (including the convert program mentioned above).
- Render at home
- The Makefile provided operates in three steps. First, it compiles
marbles.c into an executable program, table. Then it runs table to get a
RIB format description of the scene. Finally, it renders the RIB to
get table.tif. If you have a RenderMan renderer at home that
accepts RIB files (all that I know of do), run
make table.rib
on the gl machines, transfer the resulting RIB file to your home
computer, to render there. RIB files are plain text, so transfer quite
reliably.
I cannot help you find a working RenderMan renderer for home. If
you run Linux or IRIX you may copy the version of BMRT on the gl
machines. Otherwise, you may want to check the Dot C Software pages.
- Compile at home
- The Makefile I provided may not help you here, except for general
guidance. Simple RenderMan C files should be quite portable, but allow
some time to back-port before submission if you have any #includes
beyond ri.h. You will need to figure out from your RenderMan
documentation how to compile a RenderMan C program to either produce
RIB or render directly.