1. Ray Tracing Videos

We received quite a few emails from readers asking, 'Well, if that's so easy to do, can't you provide us with a real example?' That was not the plan (since the idea is to write the renderer step-by-step) but we wrote a minimalistic ray-tracer which is about 300 hundred lines in about a couple of hours. Although we are not necessarily proud of that performance, we just wanted to show that when one knows these techniques well, implementing them is not difficult. The source code is available for download. We did not and will not spend time commenting this program. It was written fairly quickly so sure there is room for improvement. In this version of the raytracer we made the light visible (it's a sphere) so its reflection would appear in the reflective balls.

I encourage the use of software such as Mathcad, Mathematica, or Matlab. The less sophisticated ray tracing program BEAM3 can also be used to study ray.

When glass spheres are totally transparent (white) it is some times hard too see them, so in our example, we tinted them slightly (red). In the real world clear glass is not necessarily visible. It depends on the environment (have you ever walked into a door made out of glass?). Note that the resulting image is not completely accurate.

Ray Tracing Videos

The shadow under the transparent red sphere should not be completely opaque. We will learn in future lessons how we can easily correct this visual inaccuracy. We also implemented other features such as a fake fresnel (using the facing ratio) and refraction. All these things will be studied later so do not worry if you don't understand them clearly at the moment. At least, you now have a small program to play with.To compile the program download the source code to your hard drive.

You will need a c compiler (we use under Linux). This program doesn't need anything particular to get compiled. Take a Linux shell and type the following command where you file lives.

Is a technique that can generate near photo-realistic computer images. A wide range of and is available for producing these images.