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What is Raytracing?
I snagged this definition from Wikipedia. :)
Ray tracing is a general technique from geometrical optics of modelling the path taken by light by following rays of light as they interact with optical surfaces. It is used in the design of optical systems, such as camera lenses, microscopes, telescopes and binoculars. The term is also applied to mean a specific rendering algorithmic approach in 3D computer graphics, where mathematically-modelled visualizations of programmed scenes are produced using a technique which follows rays from the eyepoint outward, rather than originating at the light sources. It produces results similar to ray casting and scanline rendering, but facilitates more advanced optical effects, such as accurate simulations of reflection and refraction, and is still efficient enough to frequently be of practical use when such high quality output is sought.
mjray: My CS 488 Raytracer
I wrote a Raytracer for my final project in CS 488 Computer Graphics at the University of Waterloo. In addition to several speed, multi-processing and efficiency enhancements, I implemented several features including: solid (procedural) textures, UV texture mapping (sphere, cube and interpolated UV coordinates for mesh objects), reflection, refraction, glossy reflection, fresnel reflectance, vertex normal interpolation, and soft shadows.
Interested in more details and images? Check out my raytracer project page here!