3D Rendering - 3D Rendering is the process of producing an image based on threedimensional data stored within a computer.

3D rendering is a creative process that is similar to photography or cinematography, because you are lighting and staging scenes and producing images. Unlike regular photography, however, the scenes being photographed are imaginary, and everything appearing in a 3D rendering needs to be created (or re-created) in the computer before it can be rendered. This is a lot of work, but allows for an almost infinite amount of creative control over what appears in the scene, and how it is depicted. The three-dimensional data that is depicted could be a complete scene including geometric models of different three dimensional objects, buildings, landscapes, and animated characters - artists need to create this scene by Modeling and Animating before the Rendering can be done. The 3D rendering process depicts this three-dimensional scene as a picture, taken from a specified location and perspective. The rendering could add the simulation of realistic lighting, shadows, atmosphere, color, texture, and optical effects such as the refraction of light or motion-blur seen on moving objects - or the rendering might not be realistic at all, and could be designed to appear as a painting or abstract image. NOTE: Even though they are called "3D," these images are not the same thing as the "3D Movies" that were popular in the 1950's, which created the illusion of depth on a movie screen when the audience wore special glasses. 3D computer graphics are called "3D," because of the way they are made, using 3D computer models to represent scenes before they are rendered. Although 3D graphics could be used in a 3D movie (if they ever became popular again), the final product of a 3D rendering is generally a regular two-dimension image, and these images can be used in printed pictures, on the internet, in interactive media, on TV, or in the movies. Rendering sometimes takes a long time, even on very fast computers. This is because the software is essentially "photographing" each pixel of the image, and the calculation of the color of just one pixel can involve a great deal of calculation, tracing rays of light as they would bounce around the 3D scene. To render all the frames of an entire animated movie (such as Shrek, Monsters Inc., or Ice Age) can involve hundreds of computers working continuously for months or years.
(2) Rendering refers to the process of building output files from computer animations. When

an animation renders, the animation program takes the various components, variables, and actions in an animated scene and builds the final viewable result. A render can be an individual image or a series of images (frames) saved individually or sequenced into video format. Renders can often drastically differ from the animation environment, especially in 3D animation. Many things such as textures or particle effects are displayed only in basic form in the animation environment, but rendering details the full graphical effect. In highly complex animations, rendering can take a great deal of time as the program processes each pixel in each frame. Some programs also have low-quality render settings that allow fast test renders to be sure that the animation, models, or effects are behaving according to expectations.

(3) Vector graphics rendering, sometimes abbreviated VML, refers to scalable vector graphics

(SVG) used in Web pages. This feature came into widespread use with Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5. Vector graphics formats offer advantages over traditional bitmap formats such as GIF or JPG. Perhaps most significant is the fact that with certain types of imagery, vector graphics files are much smaller, in terms of the number of bytes they contain, than bitmap files of the same objects with similar detail. This makes Web pages load faster. Another asset of vector graphics is the fact that they can be easily scaled without loss of image resolution. Vector graphics rendering is best suited to images in which shapes can be defined by mathematical functions (for example, straight lines, simple curves, waves, circles, ellipses, squares, rectangles, and triangles). In some situations, vector graphics are inferior to bitmap graphics. An example is a photograph of a complex nature scene including trees, clouds, and other objects with fractal features. While it is possible to render such an image in vector format, the vector file may contain several times as many bytes as the equivalent bitmap file.