Little big planet and computer graphics
February 19, 2009
I am fascinated by the possibilities of modern computer graphics. It all began while playing the game Little Big Planet. It does not look like a computer game. It looks like the results of handicraft work with scissors, glue, paper, drapery, etc.
This is "real-time rendering". If you take more time you can render photo-realistic images today. Is the following picture a photograph of the real world ?
There were both rendered with luxrender. See the gallery for many wonderful examples of modern rendering art.
Remark 2020: i had to change the links to luxrender and choose a new example image, because the links were broken.
Books
Well, now i am hooked on computer graphics (again) and i found the following nice and readable books. As an introduction i recommend the book of Akenine-Möller et.al.
- Kevin Suffern. Ray Tracing from the Ground Up. A K Peters Ltd. 3rd ed. 2007.
- Philip Dutré, Kavita Bala, Philippe Bekaert. Advanced Global Illumination. A K Peters Ltd. 2nd ed. 2006.
- Matt Pharr. Greg Humphreys. Physically Based Rendering. Morgan Kaufmann. 2010.
- Tomas Akenine-Möller, Eric Haines, Naty Hoffman. Real-Time Rendering. A K Peters Ltd. 3rd ed. 2009.