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Process of generating an image from a model

Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined in a scene file containing objects in a strictly defined language or data structure. The scene file contains geometry, viewpoint, textures, lighting, and shading information describing the virtual scene. The data contained in the scene file is then passed to a rendering program to be processed and output to a digital image or raster graphics image file. The term "rendering" is analogous to the concept of an artist's impression of a scene. The term "rendering" is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing program to produce the final video output. A software application or component that performs rendering is called a rendering engine, render engine, rendering system, graphics engine, or simply a renderer. Rendering is one of the major sub topics of 3D computer graphics, and in practice it is always connected to the others. It is the last major step in the graphics pipeline, giving models and animation their final appearance. With the increasing sophistication of computer graphics since the 1970s, it has become a more distinct subject. Rendering has uses in architecture, video games, simulators, movie and TV visual effects, and design visualization, each employing a different balance of features and techniques. A wide variety of renderers are available for use. Some are integrated into larger modeling and animation packages, some are stand alone, and some are free open source projects. On the inside, a renderer is a carefully engineered program based on multiple disciplines, including light physics, visual perception, mathematics, and software development. Though the technical details of rendering methods vary, the general challenges to overcome in producing a 2D image on a screen from a 3D representation stored in a scene file are handled by the graphics pipeline in a rendering device such as a GPU. A GPU is a purpose built device that assists a CPU in performing complex rendering calculations. If a scene is to look relatively realistic and predictable under virtual lighting, the rendering software must solve the rendering equation. The rendering equation does not account for all lighting phenomena, but instead acts as a general lighting model for computer generated imagery. In the case of 3D graphics, scenes can be pre rendered or generated in realtime. Pre rendering is a slow, computationally intensive process that is typically used for movie creation, where scenes can be generated ahead of time, while real time rendering is often done for 3D video games and other applications that must dynamically create scenes. 3D hardware accelerators can improve realtime rendering performance.

When the pre image (a wireframe sketch usually) is complete, rendering is used, which adds in bitmap textures or procedural textures, lights, bump mapping and relative position to other objects. The result is a completed image the consumer or intended viewer sees. For movie animations, several images (frames) must be rendered, and stitched together in a program capable of making an animation of this sort. Most 3D image editing programs can do this.

CAD libraries can have assets such as 3D models, textures, bump maps, HDRIs, and different Computer graphics lighting sources to be rendered.

A high level representation of an image necessarily contains elements in a different domain from pixels. These elements are referred to as primitives. In a schematic drawing, for instance, line segments and curves might be primitives. In a graphical user interface, windows and buttons might be the primitives. In rendering of 3D models, triangles and polygons in space might be primitives. If a pixel by pixel (image order) approach to rendering is impractical or too slow for some task, then a primitive by primitive (object order) approach to rendering may prove useful. Here, one loop through each of the primitives, determines which pixels in the image it affects, and modifies those pixels accordingly. This is called rasterization, and is the rendering method used by all current graphics cards. Rasterization is frequently faster than pixel by pixel rendering. First, large areas of the image may be empty of primitives; rasterization will ignore these areas, but pixel by pixel rendering must pass through them. Second, rasterization can improve cache coherency and reduce redundant work by taking advantage of the fact that the pixels occupied by a single primitive tend to be contiguous in the image. For these reasons, rasterization is usually the approach of choice when interactive rendering is required; however, the pixel by pixel approach can often produce higher quality images and is more versatile because it does not depend on as many assumptions about the image as rasterization. The older form of rasterization is characterized by rendering an entire face (primitive) as a single color. Alternatively, rasterization can be done in a more complicated manner by first rendering the vertices of a face and then rendering the pixels of that face as a blending of the vertex colors. This version of rasterization has overtaken the old method as it allows the graphics to flow without complicated textures (a rasterized image when used face by face tends to have a very block like effect if not covered in complex textures; the faces are not smooth because there is no gradual color change from one primitive to the next). This newer method of rasterization utilizes the graphics card's more taxing shading functions and still achieves better performance because the simpler textures stored in memory use less space. Sometimes designers will use one rasterization method on some faces and the other method on others based on the angle at which that face meets other joined faces, thus increasing speed and not hurting the overall effect.

In ray casting the geometry which has been modeled is parsed pixel by pixel, line by line, from the point of view outward, as if casting rays out from the point of view. Where an object is intersected, the color value at the point may be evaluated using several methods. In the simplest, the color value of the object at the point of intersection becomes the value of that pixel. The color may be determined from a texture map. A more sophisticated method is to modify the color value by an illumination factor, but without calculating the relationship to a simulated light source. To reduce artifacts, a number of rays in slightly different directions may be averaged. Ray casting involves calculating the "view direction" (from camera position), and incrementally following along that "ray cast" through "solid 3d objects" in the scene, while accumulating the resulting value from each point in 3D space. This is related and similar to "ray tracing" except that the raycast is usually not "bounced" off surfaces (where the "ray tracing" indicates that it is tracing out the lights path including bounces). "Ray casting" implies that the light ray is following a straight path (which may include traveling through semi transparent objects). The ray cast is a vector that can originate from the camera or from the scene endpoint ("back to front", or "front to back"). Sometimes the final light value is derived from a "transfer function" and sometimes it's used directly. Rough simulations of optical properties may be additionally employed: a simple calculation of the ray from the object to the point of view is made. Another calculation is made of the angle of incidence of light rays from the light source(s), and from these as well as the specified intensities of the light sources, the value of the pixel is calculated. Another simulation uses illumination plotted from a radiosity algorithm, or a combination of these two.

Ray tracing aims to simulate the natural flow of light, interpreted as particles. Often, ray tracing methods are utilized to approximate the solution to the rendering equation by applying Monte Carlo methods to it. Some of the most used methods are path tracing, bidirectional path tracing, or Metropolis light transport, but also semi realistic methods are in use, like Whitted Style Ray Tracing, or hybrids. While most implementations let light propagate on straight lines, applications exist to simulate relativistic spacetime effects. In a final, production quality rendering of a ray traced work, multiple rays are generally shot for each pixel, and traced not just to the first object of intersection, but rather, through a number of sequential 'bounces', using the known laws of optics such as "angle of incidence equals angle of reflection" and more advanced laws that deal with refraction and surface roughness. Once the ray either encounters a light source, or more probably once a set limiting number of bounces has been evaluated, then the surface illumination at that final point is evaluated using techniques described above, and the changes along the way through the various bounces evaluated to estimate a value observed at the point of view. This is all repeated for each sample, for each pixel. In distribution ray tracing, at each point of intersection, multiple rays may be spawned. In path tracing, however, only a single ray or none is fired at each intersection, utilizing the statistical nature of Monte Carlo experiments. As part of the approach known as physically based rendering, path tracing has become the dominant technique for rendering realistic scenes, including effects for movies. For example, the popular open source 3D software Blender uses path tracing in its Cycles renderer. Images produced using path tracing for global illumination are generally noisier than when using radiosity (the main competing algorithm), but radiosity can be difficult to apply to complex scenes and is prone to artifacts that arise from using a tessellated representation of irradiance. Path tracing's relative simplicity and its nature as a Monte Carlo method (sampling hundreds or thousands of paths per pixel) make it attractive to implement on a GPU, especially on recent GPUs that support ray tracing acceleration technology such as Nvidia's RTX and OptiX. Many techniques have been developed to denoise the output of path tracing, reducing the number of paths required to achieve acceptable quality, at the risk of losing some detail or introducing small scale artifacts that are more objectionable than noise; neural networks are now widely used for this purpose. Advances in GPU technology have made real time ray tracing possible in games, although it is currently almost always used in combination with rasterization. This enables visual effects that are difficult with only rasterization, including reflection from curved surfaces and interreflective objects, and shadows that are accurate over a wide range of distances and surface orientations. Ray tracing support is included in recent versions of the graphics APIs used by games, such as DirectX, Metal, and Vulkan.

Neural rendering is a rendering method using artificial neural networks. Neural rendering includes image based rendering methods that are used to reconstruct 3D models from 2 dimensional images. (compare with simpler 3D fileformats such as VRML or APIs such as OpenGL and DirectX tailored for 3D hardware accelerators). Other renderers (including proprietary ones) can and are sometimes used, but most other renderers tend to miss one or more of the often needed features like good texture filtering, texture caching, programmable shaders, highend geometry types like hair, subdivision or nurbs surfaces with tesselation on demand, geometry caching, raytracing with geometry caching, high quality shadow mapping, speed or patent free implementations. Other highly sought features these days may include interactive photorealistic rendering (IPR) and hardware rendering/shading.