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Photorealistic Soap Bubble Shader Development in RenderMan for Maya

by Laurent Charbonnel

In this RenderMan for Maya tutorial, we will learn the successive steps of creating a photorealistic soap bubble shader. Software required: Maya 2008 and RenderMan for Maya 2.

What you'll learn

In this RenderMan for Maya tutorial, we will learn the successive steps of creating a photorealistic soap bubble shader. From a reference picture to the finished shader, these videos will show how to choose the shading models and surface parametrizations to use. We will go over the math and physics involved and how to derive a shader implementation. We will address the issues caused by using raytracing as well as animation within the shader and support for use of the shader with Maya's particle system. Software required: Maya 2008 and RenderMan for Maya 2.

About the author

Laurent started his career as a rendering software engineer at TDI/Alias-Wavefront for IPR-Render. He then moved on to do look development and shader writing for various Hollywood movie studios. He has since started a company specialized in shading and rendering consulting and development for the movie and game industries. A partial list of his movie credits includes: Dinosaur, Hollow Man, Shark Tale, The Wild, Surf’s Up, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

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