Chapter 13

More Ray Tracing

A ray tracer is a great substrate on which to build all kinds of advanced rendering effects. Many effects that take significant work to fit into the object-order rasterization framework, including basics like the shadows and reflections already presented in Chapter 4, are simple and elegant in a ray tracer. In this chapter, we discuss some fancier techniques that can be used to ray-trace a wider variety of scenes and to include a wider variety of effects. Some extensions allow more general geometry: instancing and constructive solid geometry (CSG) are two ways to make models more complex with minimal complexity added to the program. Other extensions add to the range of materials we can handle: refraction through transparent ...

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