CS 248 Spring 1995 Rendering Competition

CS 248 Spring 1995 Rendering Competition

CS 248 - Introduction to Computer Graphics
Spring quarter, 1995
Instructor: Marc Levoy
Teaching assistants: Apostolos Lerios, Chase Garfinkle, and Todd Smith

The original stills (after JPEG compression) can be retrieved by clicking on the corresponding thumbnail.


Greg McNutt


Greg's winning competition entry was a still frame entitled The Theater, rendered in one hour and a half using 6 by 6 antialiasing. The model was loosely based on a design by Charles Lee of an actual theater (the La Reina) built in 1938 in Sherman Oaks.

The Theater illustrates primarily an impressive modeling effort. The model comprises 96 separate objects modeled in i3dm, and arranged in a scene using Composer. Moreover, The Theater illustrates the effective use of Warn lights (43 of them), such as the spot lights which give a warm glow to the posters.

Greg's composition relies heavily on 16 texture maps which were used in the following ways:

In addition to his main entry, Greg provided detailed renderings of parts of his composition:

Note here the different (relative to the first rendering) reflections on the left door: the camera is closer to the doors, and hence the highlights have moved. Moreover, you can see the floor texture clearly.

The white triangles near the ceiling overcome a common problem of renderers, namely that they don't display the lights used to illuminate the scene: Greg's solution was to place a small triangle near each light, allowing the viewer to indirectly visualize the light by the brightly illuminated triangle.

Note here that the poster is softly lit by a single spot light. Also, note the striking realism of textured versus non-textured surfaces: the wall around the poster (as well as the curved wall) are stucco textured while the wall posts are not.

Greg would like to thank his brother, Scott, for helping in the selection and design of the building.


Last update: 14 June 1995 by Apostolos "Toli" Lerios
tolis@cs.stanford.edu