Ray Tracer, Exams
Quite a while back I posted that I was working on my own ray tracer in my spare time, to learn the concepts behind modern realistic graphics. While the theory behind simple ray tracers was straightforward enough to myself, I had difficulty actually writing a working implementation, so the project languished. Fast forward to last week and in my spare time I started to look back over my code, and realised my errors which were preventing it from working correctly. Since then, I’ve gone from rendering two colored spheres onto the screen, to rendering many textured (image or mathematical based) spheres onto the screen with correct sphere-mapping, shadowing, reflections, omni lighting, sky lighting and super sampling.
While my small project will never develop to the point of anything capable of rending amazing images (like POVRay), it has allowed me to explore a new field which I’ve previously been interested in, but never examined. The best way to learn something is to write an implementation – be it USB, TCP/IP, Graphics or anything else technical related. Without formal study in those areas I won’t be able to place it in the skills section of my resume, but the personal satisfaction of knowing just how something works is good enough for me for now.
Here’s a small image of what it currently performs:
I’ll be exploring other possible features such as spot lighting and refractions at a later date. At the moment I’m currently in the pre-exam panic phase, with end of year exams being only two weeks away. Time for me to start the study processes that I hate oh-so-much. This means that I’ll be posting less, and email responses may be delayed by a day or two; if you’ve emailed, please be patient when waiting on a reply.
