Raytracer
 Alethea Bair

Assignment
 The ray-tracer was assigned as the fourth and last machine problem in CS 318, Introduction to Computer Graphics, and I have extensively modified it for the first machine problem for CS 319. The program was written in C++, and uses the FLTK library (freely available), and the GFX library (written by Prof. Michael Garland, and also available on the web).

The ray-tracer goes through three recursions, and implements shadows and reflections and refraction. It can generate spheres, planar polygons, and generic quadrics (hyperboloids, etc.). Texture mapping is implemented for spheres and rectangles. Supersampling can be toggled on and off from the Ray Tracing menu to reduce aliasing. It also implements constructive solid geometry, distributive ray tracing, Perlin noise for color, bump and displacement mapping, and global illumination using photon mapping.

Try It Out

  • Works with Windows 2000 or newer.
  • Download Raytracer.zip (1MB).
  • Unzip it with WinZip, making sure that the "use folder names" box is checked.
  • Running Raytracer.exe opens a default scene.
  • To run a different scene, use the command prompt to navigate to the folder Raytracer.exe is in.
  • Then, type Raytracer scenes/*.scn , where *.scn is the name of any of the scene files in the scenes directory.
  • The following images are examples of scenes rendered with this program.