PCTrace - A Raytracer


You know you have been raytracing too long when ...
...when people ask you, "What's up? ", you reply " Y ".
-- from the comp.graphics.raytracing newsgroup

PCTrace is raytracer.It creates photo-realistic images using a rendering technique called raytracing.It reads a text `scene' file containing information about the objects
and lighting in the scene and generates an image of that scene from the view point of the camera also specified in the textfile.
If at this point you are wondering what is raytracing, check out the POVRay homepage.


Here is an overview of my labour of love -
  1. The Command Line Options - To start with ....
    1. Image Width and Height
    2. Film Type
    3. The Render Log
    4. The Input File/Output File

  2. Global Parameters - These affect everything
    1. Image Resolution (a `Progressive Trace' ??)
    2. Maximum Depth of Recursion (a bound on adaptive depth control)
    3. Minimum Weight
    4. Number of Anti-aliasing samples
    5. Number of Shadow Feelers
    6. Ambient Illumination Parameters

  3. The Camera - Our window into the world
    1. The Coordinate System
    2. Camera Specification

  4. The Lights - Brightening up the scene
    1. Light Specification
    2. Shadows

  5. The Primitives - Our Building Blocks
    1. Sphere
    2. Right Cylinder
    3. Right Cone (and Frustum)
    4. Ellipsoid
    5. General Quadric
    6. Triangle
    7. Paralellogram (subsumes rectangles & squares -- pretty smart eh !!)
    8. Infinite Plane
    9. Paralellopiped (subsumes cuboids & cubes -- ...)
    10. Torus
    11. Transforms .. moving the blocks

  6. The Surface - Cosmetics for the building blocks
    1. A plethora of coefficients - kd, ks, n, kt, kr, color, ri : Reflection, Refraction & Color
    2. Texture Maps
    3. Bump Maps
    4. Alpha Maps - here you see me, here you don't

  7. Constructive Solid Geometry - Building blocks put together
    1. Union
    2. Intersection
    3. Difference

  8. The Distributed Part - Getting the cool effects to work
    1. Soft Shadows & Area Lights
    2. Glossy Reflection
    3. Translucency

  9. Removing Unwanted Stuff - Cleaning up the mess
    1. Anti-Aliasing
    2. Sampling - equal weights or gaussian

  10. The good results - Some eye candy
    1. Sphereflakes
    2. Cosmic Cube
    3. Convex Lens
    4. A solid sphere & a bubble
    5. An Etching
    6. Wine glass & bottle
    7. Superman

  11. References




[ Scene File Format ] [ A To-Do List ] [ Avoiding Common Pitfalls ]



Page last updated on 27 October, 2005. pialpharhoalphagammaAT cse.iitd.ac.in © Parag Chaudhuri , 2009
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