Coding 8, Section 14 – Rendering

For 8^th grade Science/Coding I am doing Pixar in a Box in Khan Academy.  Currently, I am doing the fourteenth section in the course, Rendering.

The fourteenth section in Pixar in a Box has two parts: “Rendering 101” and “Mathematics of Rendering.”  I will not be doing the second section because it is meant for 12^th graders.

Part One

In this section I learned how Pixar artists render, the last step of making a Pixar movie.

I first learned what ray tracing is.  When the film finally reaches the Render Farm (what Pixar artists calls the Rendering department), the artists have to color each pixel on the screen on at a time. To make it easier the artist will put a camera in the scene and follow the ray that is projected, like this:

You can move the grid with the slide controls and touch each pixel by moving your mouse to the certain pixel on the small grid on the left.

I also learned how lighting matters when rendering.  Under a light dull surfaces, like tennis ball of a book are known as diffuse lights.  While shiny surfaces, like a pool ball or a hardcover textbook, are known as specular lights.

Notice how the pool ball has a slight reflection of the light, that is an example specular light.  The tennis ball has no reflection, which is an example of diffuse light.

That is all for this section!  This is the last section of Pixar in a Box.  More coding projects are coming!  Thanks for reading!