Post-rendering Composition

In traditional art a painter displays a 3D scene on a 2D image plane in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing. The arrangement of objects and colors is called composition and is the subject of many art books and classes. While a painter may use perspective to create depth in a scene they may also alter the perspective and color, either subtly or dramatically, to influence the focus of viewer and the effect of the image. To date, traditional 3D graphics packages have largely concentrated on modeling, textures, and lighting to create images and provide few tools for altering the composition post-rendering. In this paper we present several simple techniques for creating images with non-standard perspective and color using standard 3D rendering packages. The scene is modeled in 3D but each object has its own camera, color balance, and image size, allowing the user to alter the composition after the 3D rendering step. The purpose of this paper is not to present a complete composition system but rather to illustrate the potential of compositionbased tools.