Non-Photorealistic Rendering

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What Does Non-Photorealistic Rendering Mean?

Non-realistic photorendering (NPR) is a process by which computer engineers try to animate and represent items inspired by paintings, drawings, cartoons and other sources that do not feature photorealism. It is often used in today’s computer animation projects, where a diversity of methods creates very diverse styles of television and cinema or other video.

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Techopedia Explains Non-Photorealistic Rendering

Much of early computer graphic results focused on photorealism — they focused on animating and simulating characters and items that were very much based on real-life or photorealistic images. By contrast, non-realistic photorendering takes imaginary characters and objects, and gives them a life of their own. The rules for this are slightly different than for photorealistic rendering. For example, engineers may have built an advanced simulator for photorealistic humans, drawing on a deep knowledge of human anatomy and the movement of joints, etc. When engineers go to create a simulation for a non-realistic character or object, they are looking at a different set of range of motion instructions, different proportions, and different shapes and ways of movement. That is why non-photorealistic rendering as a new genre in computer animation has its own unique methodology and technique.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.