ABSTRACT
Shape modeling is only the beginning of the struggle to achieve any degree of realism in computer-generated images. The other two fundamental issues are modeling the interaction with light and animation. Of course these issues cannot always be neatly separated. In many cases realistic animation cannot be achieved unless the motion is built into the geometric model, and there are often complex interactions between shape models and illumination models. In fact, the appearance of most objects results from such interactions between their shape, as modeled by geometry, and the way they reflect light. This dichotomy in terms is only for descriptive convenience.
