Computer Animation - Tools

Computer Animation - Algorithms and Techniques

4003-572-01 / 4005-763-01 (Winter 2005)

Tools

Renderers

Blue Moon Rendering Tools -- BMRT

BMRT is a free implementation or Pixar's Renderman Interface and was used for rendering frames for A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2.
NOTE: As of Summer 2002, BMRT is no longer being distributed or maintained. If you are interested in using BMRT to experiment with Renderman, please see the instructor as we may be able to obtain an old version of the software.

Pixar's prman

Installed on all machines in ICL6
Also available via mycourses (see instructor for installation instructions)

Aqsis

Another implementation of the Renderman Standard. Based on the REYES algorithm.
Open Source, binaries available for Windows, Mac OS X.
Web Site: http://www.aqsis.com

Radiance

Phyiscally based, highly accurate ray-tracing software system for UNIX computers that is licensed at no cost to users for non-commercial use
Web site: http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/
References:

Greg Ward Larson and Rob A. Shakespeare, Rendering with Radiance The Art and Science of Lighting Visualization, Morgan Kaufman, 1998

Persistance of Vision (POV)

The Persistence of Vision Raytracer is a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows 95/98/NT, DOS, the Macintosh, i86 Linux, SunOS, and Amiga.
Web Site: http://www.povray.org/
References:

Alexander Enzmann, Lutz Kretzschmar, Chris Young, Ray Tracing Worlds with Pov-Ray, The Waite Group, 1994.

3D APIs

OpenGL

OpenGL is a cross-platform standard for 3D rendering and 3D hardware acceleration. The software runtime library ships with all Windows, MacOS, Linux and Unix systems.
Web Site: http://www.opengl.org/
References:

F.S. Hill, Jr, Computer Graphics Using OpenGL, 2nd Edition, Prentice-Hall,
Mason Woo, et al, OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL , Addison-Wesley, 1999
Edward Angel, OpenGL: A Primer, Addsion-Wesley, 2001

JOGL

OpenGL bindings for Java
Web site: https://jogl.dev.java.net/

Java3D

Official 3D API for Java
Web Site: http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/3D/
References:

Henry Sowizral, Kevin Rushford, and Michael Deering, The Java 3D API Specification, Addison-Wesley, 1998
Daniel Selman, Java 3D Programming, Addsion-Wesley, 2001

Direct3D

Microsoft Windows 3D API
Web Site: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/
References

Many...any favorites

Real Time Shading Language

Cg

Real Time Shading Language created by nVidia. Proposed as the standard shading language for OpenGL 2.0. Works with both OpenGL and DirectX
Web site: http://developer.nvidia.com/

Web Based Scene Description Languages

VRML97

Virtual Reality Modeling Language
Web Site:

References:

Rick Carey, Gavin Bell, The Annotated VRML 2.0 Reference Manual, Addison-Wesley, 1997

X3D

XML Version of VRML
Web Site: http://www.web3d.org/x3d/
Reference:

Web site

last updated 11/25/05