Author archive for

Stefano is a shader writer and td at Pumpkin-3D, Paris. He previously served Lumiq Studios, Softimage, Phoenix Tools and Action Synthese. He has been working with mental ray since its first release in Softimage 3D.



Adaptive Occlusion

November 6th, 2006 by Stefano Jannuzzo. Viewed 7944 times.

The standard occlusion shaders sample the environment sending out a bunch of rays, and return a color based on the percentage of rays hitting some objects. Mathematically speaking, they integrate the hemisphere (or the cone) centered above the normal with the given number of samples. As we know, a higher sampling rate gives better results, [...]

Mapping Lights

July 13th, 2006 by Stefano Jannuzzo. Viewed 5851 times.

Let’’s see how it is possible to texture a spot light’’s color based on the angular distance from the spot direction.

Motion Blur as a Post Process

July 5th, 2006 by Stefano Jannuzzo. Viewed 11619 times.

Due to the long rendering times involved, most people prefer to perform motion blur as a post process. Here’’s how you can do so with freely available tools.

Writing a Phenomenon for Softimage XSI and Mental Ray

July 2nd, 2006 by Stefano Jannuzzo. Viewed 27487 times.

Have you ever used Apple’s Shake? Have you ever built macros with Shake? Have you ever wished you could create macros in XSI’s Render Tree?
Well you can, these are called Phenomenon. A Phenomenon is group of shaders exposed to the users as a single entity. You can hide or show, as you see fit, any [...]