VU Rendering - Hall of Fame 2024

Crystals

This scene pays homage to a past rendering featured in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEbGjFt2hoQ. Built using the original, self-created assets from that project, it is illuminated solely by an HDRI environment map and a small spherical area emitter, which introduces subtle shadows. To enhance realism, infinite area lights were implemented to support both HDRIs and texture maps, bringing the scene to life. Depth of field (DOF) was also added to create a greater sense of depth.

Help, I flooded my Sponza!

The classic Sponza hall is rendered with a dielectric water layer, showcasing textures, normal mapping, basic Reinhard tonemapping, and underwater caustics. The caustics are resolved using manifold sampling, with a single point light as the only light source. The entire scene was rendered on the GPU with RTX hardware acceleration.

Couch lit by the Moonlight

The couch, cushions, and the blanket are sculpted from scratch in Blender, with the help of the cloth simulation tool and cloth brushes.
The moonlight shines in through the blinds of a window.

The hidden gate

The scene features 16 area lights, with a mirror material on the right and a dielectric material at the front. The left statue uses a chrome-like microfacet material, while the right statue has a textured Phong material for a glossy look. Most diffuse materials are textured, some with transparency. The fog is a camera-facing billboard. Reinhard tone mapping and anti-aliasing techniques are applied.

Thanks to

• Claudio for the Time-Room model
• VIS-All-3D for the Office Plant Model

Galactic Rendering Portal 

This rendering showcases advanced volumetric effects using a chromatic null-scattering algorithm to support heterogeneous volumes, including clouds, sandy ground, and fire. Progressive majorant adjustment and emissive volume sampling is implemented. Multiple importance sampling (MIS) optimally blends BRDF, surface, and volume sampling. The scene features albedo and radiance textures, a textured skybox, and subsurface scattering for the green plastic table and angel statue. Reinhard tonemapping and anti-aliasing techniques further refine the final render.

Elden Remnant

This artwork, inspired by a character from Elden Ring, was created using Blender and features a Master Shader based on a microfacet model. The shader supports diffuse and specular reflection, metallic surfaces, translucency, and transparency. Albedo, roughness, metallic factor, translucency factor, and transparency factor can all be controlled via textures. Unfortunately, the project wasn’t finished in time, leaving the texture work rough and the character unposed in an unfinished scene.

Textured Still Life

This scene, arranged in Blender, features a table with various objects, each demonstrating different material properties. The tablecloth was created using a physical cloth simulation, adding realism to the setup. Implemented effects include albedo and normal map textures, dielectric shading for the rhino, a mirror BRDF for the knife, and a microfacet BRDF for the glass. The lighting is enhanced with mesh emitters, while a Mitchell–Netravali filter and extended Reinhard tone mapping refine the final render.

Naughty Bunny

The San Miguel scene has been enhanced with additional meshes and light sources, including candles and moonlight. Materials feature diffuse BSDFs with cosine-weighted hemisphere sampling and mirror BSDFs. Rendering was performed using iterative path tracing with Russian Roulette for throughput optimization, Multiple Importance Sampling (balance heuristic) at 4096 samples per pixel, anti-aliasing, and ACES tonemapping for improved color accuracy.

Luminous Cavern

The scene takes place in a deep otherworldly cavern. The cave's rough stone surfaces are represented using diffuse materials. Small puddles of water are spread around the floor and reflect the glowing mushrooms and glowworms on the ceiling using a mirror BSDF. The scene is illuminated by a large sun-like mesh emitter at the entry of the cavern and around 200 mushrooms and glowworms.

Quackie's Revenge

The rendering features a villain, a duck watching another duck struggling to stay afloat, slowly sinking into the inky water. The drowning duck
pays the price for refusing to share the last cookie. The effects implemented are textures, raymarching, homogeneous medium, volumetric path tracing for participating medium and subsurface scattering.
 

Stone Prison

This scene features custom stone walls created and arranged in Blender. The walls were generated using Blender scripting, randomly distributing predefined stones. The final render was achieved using bidirectional path tracing.

Shiba with Bunny in the mirror room

A shiba with a bunny in a room filled with mirror pillars.  The shiba was modeled in blender by hand, while the bunny was taken from previous assignments. The poly backdrop was generated using geometry nodes with a noise texture applied to a subdivided plane. The mirror pillars are simple low-poly cylinders using a mirror BRDF. The room is lit by only two area lights on the left and right, both using different colors creating an interesting color gradient throughout the scene.

Violet glass and curved mirror

The scene consists of a simple box with a curved mirror on the left wall. Inside, a panel of violet glass is placed diagonally under the light, positioned between a model of Erato, a Greek muse, and a bust of Ajax. The main visual effects come from the curved mirror and the high refractive index of the glass, which create interesting reflections and distortions.

About Wood

This scene focuses on working with wood materials and uses texture mapping. It was rendered using NEE path tracing from Assignment 3, with added antialiasing and texture mapping to enhance detail and realism.

Fallen lamp post

One of the four lamp posts has fallen over and its glass has shattered all over the ground. Simulated using Blender rigid bodies. The ground was made using geometry nodes.