Rendering is the most important step on getting all the work fron the other departments to appear photoreal. Even though rendering TD's are not responsible for creating the final images (the compositors or lighters are), their skills are extremely important to make sure shots can actually be rendered. TD-College's rendering courses are designed to take a novice or non-user and equip them with the knowledge to be able to work with either of the two most popular rendering technologies in the industry, Mental Ray and RenderMan. This is done by building on the knowledge acquired on the basic TD skills courses and then covering meticulously all details of the two renderers.
Compositing is the final stage of production before shots go out for final color correction. Intimate knowledge of how compositing works is absolutely necessary for a rendering TD since most of the assets and rendered elements produced in other departments will almost always pass through compositing on their to completion.
This course will introduce the user to Mental Images' MentalRay. MentalRay is a high end renderer which is extremelly flexible due to its programability. Its also an incredibly fast raytracer.
Shader programming in MentalRay is several steps more complicated than shader programming in RenderMan, but the extra complication means that you will have a lot more power in your hands.
