=== Assignment 1 ===
== Installing pbrt ==
I built pbrt using VS2005 on XP. My first error came from spaces in the pbrt path. Another error came from changing the path of the "openexr-1.4.0-vsnet2003" to "openexr-1.4.0-vsnet2005" when it needed to be "openexr-1.4.0-vs2005". I became convinced at some point that the calls to Bison and Flex were missing a space, and that adding a space fixed my build problems, but this turned out to be superstition.

== Rendering ==

I quickly grew tired of waiting so long for each 300x300 render to see the effects of my tiny changes. I decided to mock up my lighting in Maya, where I could position lights in real-time and get accurate renders very quickly. I used a sphere as a stand-in for the head. I continued using Maya to mock up my lighting for each of the four renders before copying the positions and rotations of each object into the pbrt file. The match was pretty accurate and from there I would manually tweak the pbrt file until I was happy. I realized very quickly that my only one of the cpu-cores in my computer could render at a time and took to working on two files at a time. My process would be: Tweak A, start render. Look at results from B's last render, tweak B, start render. Look at results of A, tweak A, etc. On the fourth image I realized the value of taking the resolution down to 150x150 for tests.

== Experimentation ==

I did not realize until moments ago that we were supposed to try and match the sample images exactly. I used the same kinds, and relative positions, of lights but the look is configured more to my personal preference than to matching the sample images.

I was baffled as to whether pbrt was a left or right-handed system. The book declares pbrt to be left-handed yet any change I made seemed consistent with a right-handed system. I suspect that my changes were in the camera-space rather than world-space. Further experiments are needed.

I attempted to install a pbrt plug-in for Maya but it did not work in my fifteen minutes of experimentation. The plug-in was built for a later version than I had on my PC. I may put more time into getting this to work if it seems valuable for future projects.