A single scene can render into infinitely many possible images

Evidence

One of the hardest things to explain to students who have never worked in 3-D before is the concept of “a render.” That is, for those who are used to working in something like Photoshop, the image shown in the workspace generally reflects the resulting image, to the point where there is little distinction. It can be difficult to get used to the idea of a program in which there is no image until you render it, and furthermore that the render may seem to have absolutely nothing to do with what you see in the workspace. (I often have students render a completely black image because they’ve accidentally deleted the only lamp from the scene.) Yes, there are objects in the file. But the actual image relies on a long list of variables like camera angle, lighting, textures, material, render engine, and render quality. Any one scene could thus produce an infinite number of different images depending on how it is rendered, each image essentially a different treatment of the same set of objects. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 423

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the ‘rendering’ metaphor concretely via 3-D modeling, which is the book’s central explanatory device.
• XREF: The render metaphor as a cognitive lens parallels the reader’s interest in how representations structure understanding (cf. Communication as Culture’s point about representation metaphors). — connects to: The object is both fully within each appearance and totally beyond the whole series — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 118