Lighting and Rendering

To create visually interesting and believable art assets for animation, film and games, it is important for artists to understand the underlying theory and techniques to interpret light and materials from the real world into assets for production pipelines. In this course, students will learn about lighting and rendering techniques and technologies which make visuals possible in modern day digital screen outputs, what their limitations are, and what tools and techniques can be used to make the best looking graphics while optimising for performance. This course covers surface and lighting techniques, including interpretation of real objects using techniques such as photogrammetry to capture existing 3D objects and environments. Students will also learn the theory of illumination models and rendering pipelines, and how these things can be used to create believable renders. Students will be shown how to texture 3D models, what shaders are and how they work, and time will be spent looking at how these can be optimised to maximum rendering performance. Finally, students will learn how to use industry standard tools such as parts of the Adobe suite to create the most aesthetically interesting renderings possible.