Looking For A Scene For the Cover of Physically Based Rendering, 4ed

[Matt Pharr]

Work on the text of 4th edition of Physically Based Rendering: From Theory To Implementation is moving along well.  One important detail to attend to is to find a scene to use on the cover of the book.

The cover image is an important part of the book.  It has always been rendered with pbrt, the renderer that the book describes, and so it sums up the value proposition of reading the book: if you study the book's text, you will understand all of the theory and implementation behind rendering images like this one.

For the second edition, we were very fortunate to have Guillermo M. Leal Llaguno create the now-classic "San Miguel" scene, and for the third, Timm Dapper and Jan-Walter Schliep at Laubwerk made a beautifully complex outdoor landscape scene.  These scenes have become computer graphics classics, appearing in many subsequent research papers.

In short:

* We are looking for a new scene, or one that has not been widely seen before.
* It must be rendered by pbrt, though if you have a nice scene in FBX format, we can help convert it to pbrt's scene format.
* You must be willing to allow the scene description to be freely shared once the book has been released so that anyone using pbrt can render it themselves (e.g., by offering it under a CC-BY license).
* We would prefer an interior scene this time (the last three have all been outdoors), ideally with multiple interesting viewpoints, a variety of objects and materials, and complex lighting.
* The more complex the better :-)

We can offer a few things in return:

* Credit (in the book and on the book's website, etc.) and our own deepest thanks.
* A few signed copies of the book.
* The knowledge that most likely, your scene will help advance the state of the art of rendering; pbrt is widely used by researchers to develop new algorithms, and putting interesting and challenging scenes in researchers' hands has turned out to be an effective way to spur innovation.

If you think you may be able to help or have any questions, please email us at aut...@pbrt.org.

Thanks,
Matt, Wenzel, and Greg

[Jan Walter]

Hi,

here is a suggestion:

https://github.com/wahn/export_multi/tree/master/17_attic

The scene comes from Gleb Alexandrov and I did contact him
before using his scene for my rendering tests for various renderers.
I must have rendered it within the last year at least with pbrt v3,
because I stored a version rendered by the C++ code (I do provide
a fully Rust based v3 compatible renderer):

https://github.com/wahn/export_multi/blob/master/17_attic/img/attic_pbrt_cpp.png

But I didn't spend the time to add a sun&sky replacement, and/or volumetric
lighting (aka god rays). I think adding those features would be an interesting
lighting setup. Most of the geometry details are scanned or converted
from photos.

I guess the first question would be, would you like to see it on the
cover or not,
then ask Gleb Alexandrov , if he would grant the usage for the cover scene.
I have a Blender version of his scene, which I cleaned up for export to several
renderers (using my own Python code):

https://bitbucket.org/wahn/blender-add-ons/wiki/Home (export_multi.py
is the part
being responsible to export to various other renderers).

It would be a bit of work for me to adjust the code for pbrt v4, but
I have v4 installed on Linux and Windows 10 and I'm sure I could tweak
the existing Python scripts (to export the Blender scene) for v4 scene
files. Maybe the sun & sky shaders and the volumetric lighting (dust
in the air) might need some discussion, but I think the scene might be
worth considering ...

My 2 cents,

Jan

On 2/22/21, Matt Pharr <matt....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Work on the text of 4th edition of *Physically Based Rendering: From Theory
> To Implementation* is moving along well. One important detail to attend to

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[Jan Walter]

BTW the gaps in the roof are not modelled but created by a texture for
opacity/transparency ...