A ray tracer is a computer program that simulates the behavior of light in a virtual environment. It does this by tracing the path of light rays as they interact with objects in the scene, and then calculates the color of each pixel in the final image.
Ray tracing works by simulating the path of light rays as they travel through a scene. It starts with a camera position and casts a ray out into the scene for each pixel in the image. When the ray intersects an object in the scene, the color of the object is calculated based on the properties of the material it is made from, such as its reflection and refraction. The ray is then traced further into the scene to simulate reflections and other effects. This process is repeated for every pixel in the image, resulting in a final image that simulates the behavior of light in the scene.
- camera positioning
- ray-object intersection testing
- shading and texturing
- recursive ray tracing
It has been an incredible experience for me to witness how fundamental concepts in physics, such as Snell's Law, The laws of reflection, and others beyond my current level of understanding, are applied to render graphical objects using ray tracing. Over the past three weeks, I have been engrossed in this tutorial, and have gotten quite a learning curve, particularly in the mathematical aspect. This investment of my time has been truly rewarding, as I have not only gained a deeper appreciation of the principles of ray tracing, but also of the wider applications of physics in computer graphics.