Assignment 4 - Ray Tracing: The Z-Buffer

CS5600 - Introduction to Computer Graphics

Due Wednesday, 5 April 2006, 23:59 hours

Overview

This project requires you to implement a basic ray tracer that will be built upon in the next assignment. The ray tracer should preform ray-object intersections and display the objects correctly via a z-buffer that you must construct. You should not use any openGL command to draw to the screen.

Project Requirements:

The following are requirements for the project:

Create a Scene. The scene to be ray traced should contain at least 2 triangles and 2 spheres. The spheres should be described by parametric equations. The scene should be setup such that all objects in the scene overlap at least one other object, demonstrating the robustness of your z-buffer. Assign each object a different, flat color value.

Implement a Ray Tracer. Using the template code from assignment 1 (see below) construct a ray tracer which determines the color of every pixel in the rgb_pixel data structure (named canvas).

Object Intersections. Implement ray-triangle and ray-sphere intersections.

Save and Submit Images. You must submit at least one image generated by your ray-tracer demonstrating the use of the z-buffer. You may use screenshots (i.e. from gimp or alt-printscreen) to capture images if the save function from the template file does not produce satisfactory results.

Documentation: Briefly explain what your program does and how to operate it. In addition, describe all data structures, major functions, and the program's flow of control. Also document any known bugs and any areas of the assignment you had problems with.

Turn in all your code and documentation using submit into the directory called assign4Linux for Linux assignments or assign4Windows for windows assignments (i.e. submit cs5600 assign4OS file1 file2...). Your code should be written in C/C++, however you may choose to develop on Windows or Linux. Be sure to hand in your MSVC project or your Makefile and that there are no problems running your code.

Resources

You should use the Makefile and template file from the first assignment. As mentioned above, your ray tracer should fill in the pixel colors in the rgb_pixel pixel buffer data structure. You do not need to provide a user interface for this assignment and are welcome to remove this code from the template. Here a link to the MSVC 2005 project.