sl
, RenderMan's shading language. Using
sl
may seem like a monumental task if you aren't very familiar
with programming. That's ok. Remember that input parameters for shaders are
controlled from Glimpse (ATOR's shading interface). Tweaking these
parameters to get a shader just right
usually requires as much (if not more) work as writing the shader in the first
place.
shader
compiler:
prompt% shader my_shader.sl
This will compile your .sl
file into a .slo
file,
ready for use in a scene.
You might want to use the RenderMan Shader mode available for emacs, which
provides some handy key-commands as well as context-based coloring. To do
this, you'll want to copy (or symlink) the .emacs
file we've
set up:
prompt% cp /home/cse490/elisp/.emacs .
To compile from within emacs, just type control-C, control-C.
.sl, .slo, .sli, .vma
.sl
: this is the suffix for sl
source.
.slo
: this is the suffix for compiled sl
.
.sli
: a shading language interface file. This
is where you can document the meanings of your shader's parameters
for use within ATOR. Documentation on the .sli file format is
available here.
.vma
: this is the suffix for Looks. Looks,
according to ATOR documentation, are "the next incarnation of shaders."
They are robust shaders with lots of interface features and
documentation. You can basically think of them as shrink-wrapped,
marketable shaders. You likely will not write these for now.
sl
reference pages.
/usr/local/prman/tutorial/ch16
. Construct
a simple scene in Alias (primitives are fine), and assign shaders to
surfaces and lightsources. Render the scene.