RenderMan Exercise: Graphics Group Logo Competition
Extended Due Date: 7 March, 5pm
Use turnin for your submission

In this exercise, you will design and render a logo for the MIT Computer Graphics Group using RenderMan. The winning logo will be adopted by the group and placed on the top level homepage (http://graphics.lcs.mit.edu/) with a credit to the winner. The winner will also receive a computer graphics text of his/her choice as a prize (up to $50).

The only restriction on the logo is that it must include the words "MIT Computer Graphics Group." Your final solution should be submitted in TIF format at an aspect ratio of 3:2. As an example of what we have in mind, see the logo for Stanford's Computer Graphics Group at http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/. You might also look at other graphics schools around the country for inspiration, such as UWashington, Cornell, Berkeley, Princeton, etc. It is desirable for your design to support two different versions: a simple version that will appear on the corner of tech reports and slides and a more complex version that will appear at the top of the homepage.

You may use models that come with the RenderMan installation, but you are encouraged to construct your own scenes. There are many example shaders available on-line, including almost three dozen that come with the software. If you search the net, you will find many other examples.

Your design should be aesthetic and involve some nontrivial shaders. It should also have an appearance that evokes MIT.

You are encouraged to consult with other students, but each student should submit an individual entry.

Copies of the RenderMan Companion and Texturing and Modeling - A Procedural Approach are on reserve in the LCS Reading Room.

We now have included a full description of the RenderMan Interface, including the RIB format.

Some Notes about RenderMan on Athena

RenderMan is available on all of the SGI Indys on Athena. In addition to the program, there are also all of the examples from The RenderMan Companion that give an excellent introduction to how you can use the software. Because of the particularities of Athena, you will need to do a few extra steps for RenderMan to run correctly.

Each time you log in, before using the software, you will need to attach the RenderMan locker and modify the path.

add renderman
set_renderman


Each time you use a new machine, you will have to set up a symbolic link that adjusts for the installation location. Eventually, you may wish to change the makefile to correspond to the Athena location, but for now, the symbolic link is the easiest fix. You will need to be root to do this; you can get the root password by typing tellme root on any public Athena machine.

ln -fs /mit/renderman/sgi /usr/local/prman


To run the demos example and tutorials, you run a script that copies the file tree to the /tmp partition on the machine. You can then make the examples. Be aware that unless you copy these files to another location once you are finished, they will be lost.

add renderman
set_demos


Lastly, Athena has a strange setup for the framebuffer that RenderMan can't deal with. We've modified the tutorial files to render to a file instead of to the framebuffer. You can look in the tutorial files to see how we write out to a file. If you want to see what the command originally looked like when writing to the framebuffer, you can look at any of the files ending in ".c.orig" instead of ".c"

Please send mail to the class staff if you encounter any problems with the RenderMan installation.

Last modified: 3 March 1997