Photorealistic Soap Bubble Shader Development in RenderMan for Maya
In this RenderMan for Maya tutorial, we will learn the successive steps of creating a photorealistic soap bubble shader. Software required: Maya 2008 and RenderMan for Maya 2.
What you'll learn
In this RenderMan for Maya tutorial, we will learn the successive steps of creating a photorealistic soap bubble shader. From a reference picture to the finished shader, these videos will show how to choose the shading models and surface parametrizations to use. We will go over the math and physics involved and how to derive a shader implementation. We will address the issues caused by using raytracing as well as animation within the shader and support for use of the shader with Maya's particle system. Software required: Maya 2008 and RenderMan for Maya 2.
Table of contents
- Discussing Concepts of Shader Development 4m
- Shader Development Setup in RenderMan 20m
- Looking at Parameterizations 24m
- Understanding and Coding the Physics Behind a Soap Bubble 43m
- Incorporating Efficient Raytracing 18m
- Adding Variations to the Shader 26m
- Interfacing with Maya Particle Systems 11m
- Final Thoughts and Conclusion 2m
About the author
Laurent started his career as a rendering software engineer at TDI/Alias-Wavefront for IPR-Render. He then moved on to do look development and shader writing for various Hollywood movie studios. He has since started a company specialized in shading and rendering consulting and development for the movie and game industries. A partial list of his movie credits includes: Dinosaur, Hollow Man, Shark Tale, The Wild, Surf’s Up, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.