• Linear workflows.

Linear workflows have become the industry standard adopted by most studios because of the great flexibility. It is much easier to adjust the reflectivity of an object or change the basic colours of individual model sections in Photoshop rather than fine-tune and 3D render. This is the great flexibility that the Pixel Squid product offers to the end user. Each layer or element rendered contributes to the final image. Therefore, Pixel Squid content must be generated in a linear workflow. The diagram below shows the basic flow of the linear pipeline.

• High Dynamic Range Imaging

High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) is a technique for photographic imaging and film and ray-traced computer-generated imaging that reproduces a wider range of luminance than standard digital imaging or photographic techniques. Standard techniques only allow differentiation within a certain luminance range. There are no visible features outside this range, as in brighter areas everything looks pure white and pure black in darker areas.

The ratio between the maximum and minimum values of an image is called dynamic range. HDRI can be used to record many real-world scenes that contain very bright, direct sunlight to extreme shadows or very faint nebulae. High Dynamic Range (HDR) images are usually produced by capturing and then combining several different, narrower exposure ranges of the same subject.

The two main types of HDR images are computer renderings and images produced by combining multiple low dynamic range (LDR) or standard dynamic range (SDR) photographs. You can also purchase HDR images using a special image sensor such as an oversampled binary image sensor. Due to print and display contrast limitations, the extended brightness range of the HDR input image must be compressed to make it visible.

Gamma Correction

It is the editing of the gamma curve of an image to perform non-linear tonal editing of the image to detect the dark and light parts of the image signal and increase the ratio of the two to improve image contrast. In the field of computer graphics, the curve of the conversion relationship between the screen output voltage and the corresponding brightness is called the gamma curve.

In terms of the characteristics of a conventional CRT (cathode ray tube) screen, the curve is usually a power function, Y = (X + e) γ, where Y is the luminance, X is the output voltage, e is the compensation factor and the power value (γ) is the gamma value. Changing the magnitude of the power value (γ) changes the gamma curve of the CRT. A typical gamma value is 0.45, which makes the brightness of a CRT image linear. For display screens such as televisions using CRTs, this must be corrected as the luminous greyscale of the input signal is not a linear function, but an exponential one.

ACES

The Academy Colour Coding System is an open colour management and exchange system developed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and industry partners.

Colour depth

In computer graphics, colour depth represents the number of bits used to store 1 pixel of colour in a bitmap or video frame buffer. It is also referred to as bit/pixel (bpp). The higher the colour depth, the more colours are available.

The colour depth is described by the term “n-bit colour”. If the colour depth is n bits, then there are 2n colour options and the number of bits used to store each pixel is n.

Mantra

Existing render nodes can be edited using the name of the node using the Render License Edit render node. To see the actual driver node network, click on the path at the top of the Network Editor pane and select another network that is not supported. If you add object properties to a render driver, they are defined by default for all objects in the scene. Select the render node, click on the gear menu in the Edit Parameter Editor and select Edit Render Parameters to edit the node’s properties. For complex scenes involving multiple render passes, separate lighting and shadow passes etc., you can create dependencies between render drivers by connecting driver nodes. See Rendering of dependencies.