- Source: RenderMan Shading Language
Renderman Shading Language (abbreviated RSL) is a component of the RenderMan Interface Specification, and is used to define shaders. The language syntax is C-like.
A shader written in RSL can be used without changes on any RenderMan-compliant renderer, such as Pixar's PhotoRealistic RenderMan, DNA Research's 3Delight, Sitexgraphics' Air or an open source solution such as Pixie or Aqsis.
RenderMan Shading Language defines standalone functions and five types of shaders: surface, light, volume, imager and displacement shaders.
An example of a surface shader that defines a metal surface is:
Shaders express their work by reading and writing special variables such as Cs (surface color), N (normal at given point), and Ci (final surface color).
The arguments to the shaders are global parameters that are attached to objects of the model (so one metal shader can be used for different metals and so on). Shaders have no return values, but functions can be defined which take arguments and return a value. For example, the following function computes vector length using the dot product operator ".":
Further reading
Upstill, Steve (1990). The RenderMan companion : a programmer's guide to realistic computer graphics. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-50868-0.
Apodaca, Anthony; Gritz, Larry (1999). Advanced RenderMan : creating CGI for motion pictures. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 1-55860-618-1.
Cortes, Rudy; Raghavachary, Saty (2008). The RenderMan shading language guide. Boston, Mass: Thomson Course Technology. ISBN 1-59863-286-8.
External links
Shading Language (RSL) documentation
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- Pixar RenderMan
- Pat Hanrahan
- Shading language
- RenderMan Shading Language
- Open Shading Language
- Pixar RenderMan
- OpenGL Shading Language
- RenderMan Interface Specification
- RenderMan
- List of programming languages by type
- Houdini (software)
- Shader
