Xindi Lyu-Looking Outwards 09

The rendering video by Alex Roman

While scrolling through my peer’s looking outwards blog posts, my attention was drawn by Xiaoying Meng’s post about photo-realistic renderings generated by computational algorithms. I generally agree with Xiaoying that the renderings done by Alex Roman is not only exquisitely detailed and realistic but also beautifully displayed with an artistic effect that is nearly impossible to be produced by pure photography. The algorithm mainly simulated the textures, the volume, as well as the light and atmosphere in this project. What’s critical about this simulation is that this algorithm is also able to simulate the behavior of the materials under certain circumstances of lighting, while also the lights themselves were generated accurately according to climate and time settings in the software, displayed as different intensities and different colors as it is in real life. What also is interesting about this computational rendering is that the “viewer” can be positioned at any any location with out the physical restraints, which is why lot of the best renderings have their incredible angles of viewing.