Rendering Engine/Application for College Education
polycounter lvl 7
Cheers all,
I am teaching Light and Rendering next Semester. Spring 2018.
I am curious what Rendering engine/application that you would teach to college students?
Why would you use that rendering engine in classroom setting?
Vray, Renderman, Mental ray, Redshift, Arnold, Octane, etc… ???
Does anyone have any experience or advice that they would like to share for teaching Light and Rendering?
I planning using Maya 2018.
Thanks anyone for your time.
Take Care
-Dm
I am teaching Light and Rendering next Semester. Spring 2018.
I am curious what Rendering engine/application that you would teach to college students?
Why would you use that rendering engine in classroom setting?
Vray, Renderman, Mental ray, Redshift, Arnold, Octane, etc… ???
Does anyone have any experience or advice that they would like to share for teaching Light and Rendering?
I planning using Maya 2018.
Thanks anyone for your time.
Take Care
-Dm
Replies
The downside is the lack in control.
For lighting principles, I would say mental ray so students can understand how renderers break up lighting tasks - photons, final gather, gi, bounced simulated lights.
It could help to show them maya software rendering for history sake.
Redshift and Arnold might be amazing programs, but if 90% of advertised jobs are requesting VRAY. TEACH VRAY. Your students will be far more grateful. Same applies for 2D and 3D Programs.
Blender & GIMP are great programs, but good luck finding a job without advertising 3DSMAX & Photoshop.
Maya is good for 3D, although 3DSMAX is Industry Standard for Arch Viz. VRAY is also industry standard for Arch Viz, but more flexible for game assets.
Just keep in mind the impact it's going to have on the students job prospects.
and red is very similar to vray... if you know redshift its easy to jump to vray...
but i have to agree if tits for archviz i would go with vray/corona...
I'd recommend Corona for the latter, as it's about as straightforward as a path tracer can get, but has no Maya branch. It would also be very valuable to talk about real-time rendering and GPU renderers.
Ideally they should be able to take away knowledge that's both useful in a wide variety of contexts as well as future proofed. I know from firsthand experience both learning and teaching that the teachers only utilizing single tools do not successfully impart useful knowledge.
teach it as much software agnostic as possible, a bit of history can help, try to make it snappy and short.
Emphasise how important the fundamentals are and that they are needed no matter which program is being used to get better results.
Don´t let people fall into the (usually well meant) thought that currently widely used "industry" tools will be relevant in the upcoming years.
I could write pages about past Industry programs which play little to no role any more (thanks to broad teaching I got in my odyssey in the various school systems so far) but that would bore everyone.
Just two mentions; QuarkXpress and Softimage where once in their respective fields highly regarded industry programs but have faded or are fading and deteriorating from their once held Industry positions - if thats wrong please correct me of course.
The next looming economical shift /bubble burst or technological advancements/released programs
will shape yet again the industry so teach them to be vary of binding themselves just to one program or one thought process or the worst to one program specific workflow, instead aspire them to be agile and open instead of static and close minded.
Most important one; ask your students/pupils how much they already know and adjust the teaching accordingly!
Edit; depending on the available resources use what is available or what you as a teacher feel the most comfortable with. It helps nothing if you mean well and want to teach a program which you can´t use yourself well enough, that case would only harm the learning process of those you teach.