Render Layer

A render layer has two possible meanings:

1. A render layer, or render pass, is a dedicated pass with the rendering software to create a 3D scene, that concentrates on one specific aspect of that scene. Examples include textures, shadows, highlights, radiosity, and so on. In a still CG image, the time this takes does not matter. However, in real-time VR, when you may be re-rendering the scene ten or twenty times per second every second, there is not a great deal of time to allocate to each render pass.

Whilst multiple render passes are still advantageous in this environment, due to the different methods each concentrates on, real-time work is unlikely to have more than one or two passes at the current time.

2. Render layers are traditionally taken to mean the distance at which a 3D render takes place. For example, a wide-open environment will be rendered in layers, such as objects near to the user's point of view, objects in the middle ground, objects at a distance, objects far away, and skybox.

This is done because it would otherwise be impossible to render wide-ranging scenes such as outdoor environments in real-time, due to the overhead demands. By dividing the world up into distance layers from the user, each layer may be rendered in a more and more abstract manner, skipping over details that would not be seen at distance anyhow, and amalgamating textures into one.

It preserves the look of the environment, without sacrificing the speed of the render.

See Also: Render Pass, LOD, 3D Rendering Engine, Render Fog, Clipping plane, Hider Algorithm , Reverse Painter's Algorithm

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

Highlight Pass Render Layer Render Pass

Specular Pass

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Large Image Display: Animatrix: World Record: Logging out through Will Alone
A valuable lesson on the necessity of both allowing a safety layer for subconscious desire to log out of a full immersive VR, and a reminder why transitions are not just pretty, they are a health and stress saver.

VR Interfaces: Fogscreen
Fogscreen is a holoprojection method that utilises a layer of artificially fogged air as a display screen for projected content. It in effect, creates a cascading curtain of wet air that can be walked through whilst displaying moving, bright, images.

The Adventures of Andre and Wally B
In 1984, there was a passive CG short film, created by the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project, which some years later became Pixar. It was one of the very first CG presentations ever made, and used a borrowed supercomputer - the Cray - to render.

Large Image Display: Animatrix: Beyond: A No-Physics Zone
The Matrix distorts when a freak corruption of data creates a no-physics zone in a thin layer paralleling the floor. An advanced replication of gravity warping accidents that happen in ActiveWorlds and Second Life, today.

Render Unto Caesar
Virtual worlds have shown themselves to have very real, and fairly powerful market forces when it comes to items from within them being traded openly on the internet. Time to stop arguing about the value of virtual, and start worrying about the reality of the virtual?

Pleasures of the Flesh #1: An Introduction
Finally someone says it; something we have all really known for years, but never admitted: "Being unaware of the world around you will not make you more creative or ensure originality. It will instead render your creations shallow, and your ideas uninformed." Make sure if you read nothing else today, you read this one!

Hemisphere Lighting With Radiosity Maps
Rendering of lighting in outdoor scenes is a paramount concern. To truly be realistic, the light levels constantly vary, and the sun (or suns) are not usually even the primary lightsource! All that adds up to is a computational disaster, unless some way is found to render lightsoure data quickly, and easilly....

Render Smoke And Fog Without Being A Computation Hog
Computer scientists from UC San Diego have developed a way to generate images like smoke-filled bars, foggy alleys and smog-choked cityscapes without the computational drag and slow speed of previous computer graphics methods.

Extra Sensory Perceptions: Sensing Magnetic Fields
The first known, successful implant of an extra sensory perception to detect magnetic fields the person with the new sense was near, occurred in 2005, when a small piece of neodymium, which is a rare earth metal, that forms a permanent magnet, was coated in a thin layer of silicon, and implanted into an emergency medical technician's finger.

Large Image Display: The Stepford Wives: Blending Displays with Drapes
There are several potential ways this display is working. One of the simplest and most plausible is a colour e-paper display behind a completely transparent display medium. The e-paper handles the picture, 'refreshing' the colour display to a matt black when the layer in front, the graphical display is activated. As soon as that deactivates, the 'oil' is re-drawn. Simple, elegant, and still far beyond us.

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