the.com/rendering
Turning math into pixels, one lie about reality at a time.
means The process of converting a scene description — geometry, light, materials — into a final 2D image, whether by a computer or a painter.
from From French 'rendre,' meaning 'to give back' or 'to render,' itself from Latin 'reddere' (re- 'back' + dare 'to give'). The sense of 'rendering' as artistic depiction — giving back a likeness of something — dates to old studio and architectural practice, where a 'rendering' was a drawn or painted version of a planned building. Computer graphics simply inherited the word: the machine 'gives back' a picture for the geometry and light you fed it.
- ray tracing
- literally simulates light, then fakes the rest anyway
- real-time cost
- your GPU does billions of guesses per second
- render farms
- pixar movies take hours per single frame
- shadows
- mostly clever math tricks, not actual darkness