Ray-tracing Gallery

(click here for the more morbid scanline gallery)

I've been at this ray-tracing thing for one and one half quarters now, and this is a chronological record of the progress I've made. The pictures were rendered by my ray-tracer (LOV-ray), and were modelled by me. I'm writing my ray-tracer/modeler in Java.

My first attempts at transparency, and procedural texture mapping. The lighting is fake. My first, and at the time only, object was an Icosohedron (ala Peter Shirley). It was my black and white period as well. These first few images included a little bit of random noise, because the flat shading was getting on my nerves.

Next, I added the Sphere primitive and color. Then, transparency (correct), reflection, lighting (correct), and shadows. Cool. At this point, I bought a new computer - 120MHz 6x86, with a video card supporting true color.


	This cell contains a really cool example of transparency. Too bad you can't see it!

Next, I added non-procedural texture mapping, solid textures, and bump mapping. I drew the wallpaper.jpg by hand -- it's the coolest. The painting is "The Kramer". The bump map was scanned out of Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques by the Watts, plate 48.

Next, I added the ability to create objects from intersections of two other objects. This primitive has the property that the two objects being intersected can be primitives themeselves, or complex models. Even though this was simple to add, it's one of my favorite features of LOV-ray because it (in theory) extends my primitives to be infinite in number - powerful eh? They also allow me to show off the functionality of solid textures. The first two are intersections between finite planes and a sphere. The last is an intersection of multiple spheres.

Other sites worth checking out: Ryan Graham's gallery POV-ray homepage