MoonRay README

Guidelines for Content Contributors

Content Structure

There are three kinds of topics:

• Concept topics present abstract concepts, descriptions, and examples, that explain the background and context of a subject.
• Task topics provide procedural information about how to do something, usually as a procedure consisting of steps.
• Reference topics provide detailed facts or specifications, usually in the form of a table or list.

Contributing Philosophy

We have begun migrating pages from DreamWorks Animation's Confluence spaces and converting them to Markdown files. Also, we have provided a content template Markdown file for you to use as a starting point.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language used to add basic formatting to plaintext documents.

Jekyll and Github Pages

Jekyll uses Liquid templates and Markdown files to produce a complete, static website ready to be served by a web server. Jekyll has been adopted by GitHub Pages, a feature that enables us to host a website straight from our GitHub repository.

Tools

Markdown files are plaintext, which means that you can use any IDE (like Visual Studio Code) or text editor (like Notepad ++). The tools often support Markdown using extensions that enable you to preview the output in real time as you write.

• Markdown editing with Visual Studio Code
• MarkdownViewer++ Notepad++ plugin

Process

To begin contributing content:

1. Open one of the following content template files:
   • Content template
   • Screen object template
   • Snippets template
2. Do one of the following:
   • Open a migrated topic's MD file and begin selectively copy/pasting content from the topic into the template.
   • Begin writing new content in the appropriate sections of the template file.
3. Save the template file as a new MD file in the appropriate subfolder.

When contributing content, don't focus on how the output will appear — the technology is handling that part! Rather, focus on writing excellent content.

Tips:
For help with Markdown sysntax, see Markdown Cheat Sheet.
Markdown should support using HTML tags. This is helpful to work around limitations of Markdown syntax. But this should be done rarely and usually not in service of formatting the output.
View the Markdown source for this README file for more exposure to Markdown syntax.

Style Rules

Grammar

Grammatical tactics to improve clarity.

• Use present tense whenever possible.

  This function will create creates any of the containers listed above.

• Use second person (you) to address the reader directly.

  The reader You can read and write both RDL formats from code using the scene_rdl2 library.

Typography

Visual cues indicating the type of information.

Tip: Anytime you consider "using quotation marks," do the following instead:

• Use bold for file names and file paths.

  Sampling methods and points being used are specified in moonray/lib/rendering/pbr/sampler/SamplingPreprocess.h.

• Use italics for emphasis and term definitions (term followed by the definition, (usually in parentheses).

  The two primary file formats: RDLA (readable text format) and RDLB (binary format).

• Use monospace for references to code and for fenced code blocks.

  One-dimensional and two-dimensional samples are stored in contiguous arrays (std::vector).

  BaseMaterial("/scene/sphere/base") {
    ["ior"] = 1.0,
    ["diffuse color"] = Rgb(0.8, 0.8, 0.2)
  }

• CAPITALIZE file extensions and keyboard keys.

  MoonRay's native scene description format is called RDL2. The two primary file formats RDLA (readable text format) and RDLB (binary format). Press the ENTER key.