Computer Graphics is an active and exciting field, with technical papers constantly flowing through the likes of ACM and IEEE journals. However, for an artist is can be a bit daunting, and engineers & CS majors have a library of jargon that can be a bit difficult for the unfamiliar to understand. CGChannel has begun a “CG Science For Artists” series that aims to explain some of these concepts in watered down terms for all to understand.
As a CG artist, you’ve already been exposed to a lot of technical jargon and applied many complex-sounding things in production. For example, you’ve probably used ‘Blinn’ or ‘Lambert’ shaders, but do you know what they actually are? And what is a ‘shader’ anyway?
Today’s applications and game engines have been reasonably successful at making the task of creating artwork simple enough that you don’t need to worry about the math or science, you can just be creative. But this stuff is actually good to know about. My hope is that with this information you may find yourself in a better position to solve problems in production.
via CG Science for Artists – Part 1: Real-Time and Offline Rendering | CG Channel.
