Rendering (computer graphics)
Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined in a scene file containing objects in a strictly defined language or data structure. The scene file contains geometry, viewpoint, textures, lighting, and shading information describing the virtual scene. The data contained in the scene file is then passed to a rendering program to be processed and output to a digital image or raster graphics image file. The term "rendering" is analogous to the concept of an artist's impression of a scene. The term "rendering" is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing program to produce the final video output.
A more realistic path traced image, using Blender's Cycles renderer with image-based lighting
Rendering of the Extremely Large Telescope
Spiral Sphere and Julia, Detail, a computer-generated image created by visual artist Robert W. McGregor using only POV-Ray 3.6 and its built-in scene description language
Rendering of an ESTCube-1 satellite
Non-photorealistic rendering
Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art, in contrast to traditional computer graphics, which focuses on photorealism. NPR is inspired by other artistic modes such as painting, drawing, technical illustration, and animated cartoons. NPR has appeared in movies and video games in the form of cel-shaded animation as well as in scientific visualization, architectural illustration and experimental animation.
A normal shader (left) and an NPR shader using cel-shading (right)
A non-photorealistic rendering of an existing 2D (photographic) image
Original here