Renderings

Renderings are the digital images produced by the process of rendering, which converts a model into a visual representation through a computer. In computer graphics, rendering translates geometry, materials, lighting, and camera parameters into pixels on a screen or into a still image or animation. Renderings are used in films, video games, architectural visualization, product design, and scientific visualization.

Render pipelines vary by technique. Rasterization converts 3D primitives into 2D fragments and applies shading, texture mapping, and lighting to produce an image quickly, suitable for interactive applications. Ray tracing simulates the paths of light rays to compute shadows, reflections, and refractions with high realism but greater computational cost. Path tracing, a form of Monte Carlo ray tracing, samples many light paths to approximate global illumination. Radiosity and other global illumination methods emphasize interreflections of light. Denoising and upsampling techniques are commonly used to reduce noise in renders.

Real-time rendering aims to maintain high frame rates, typically using rasterization with approximations, while offline or render-farm rendering can take minutes or hours per frame to achieve photorealism through path tracing. Modern pipelines often blend techniques and rely on hardware acceleration (CPUs, GPUs, and specialized ray-tracing cores) plus AI-based denoisers.

Inputs include 3D geometry (meshes), materials and shaders, textures, lighting setups, camera positions, and scene graphs. Outputs are still images, image sequences, animations, or interactive frames. Output quality is evaluated by realism, accuracy of lighting and shading, texture fidelity, and the balance with performance constraints.

Beyond entertainment, renderings are used in medical volume rendering, scientific visualization, and architectural visualization.