• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.36
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• pp.493-510
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• 2014

From game consoles to TV and Hollywood films, 3D rendering technology is involved in various fields. Up until the late 90s, the computer image rendering method was rasterization that mainly used Phong Shading, and up until recently it was the go-to method for movies and film animation. In the 21st century, the quality provided by Ray Tracing and the development of Global Illumination was much more realistic and thus became popularized. However, despite its growing use in architectural rendering to the markets, Global Illumination in film animation and movies was limited due to its long render time. So, in this thesis, if one were to take the concept from each rendering method and consider it from a mathematical perspective, one could adapt the Ambient Occlusion's equation to the illumination loop equation used in rasterization. This algorithm modification has the capability to reflect the lighting of a diverse array of colors, like in Global Illumination, with a fast render time, as in rasterization, and the example RenderMan Shader is based upon this new algorithm. In conclusion, with Global Illumination's naturalistic lighting and rasterization's rendering speed, the combination of the best points of each is a new method with a short rendering time while producing good quality. I hope animations and films can benefit from this algorithm by the reduction of budget with an overall better quality output in VFX production.