Nekochan Net

Hi,

I am looking for a configurable Ray tracer. I am trying to do some ocean surface modelling and wanted a tracer/renderer that I can get quite low level in terms of reflectivity models?

Any thougths

more precise, what kind of app? standalone, complete package? smp capable? etc.

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r-a-c.de

For lighting simulation try http://www.radiance-online.org/

Actually, RADIANCE may be a bit of an overkill for this application. You can model a water surface with the MESH primitive (as I did for some test scenes), but it's quite a pain. In general, RADIANCE is quite difficult to use and has a substantial learning curve -- there is no GUI to guide you. I developed the photon mapping addon for RADIANCE some years back (http://www.ise.fhg.de/areas-of-business ... on-mapping,
still hasn't made it into the main distro, AFAIK), and I found it pretty tough to get into -- your mileage may vary. Remember this is primarily a *lighting* simulation tool. For a more general renderer, you might want to check out POVray.

--Roland

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"END OF LINE" (MCP)

I wrote a ray tracer for BeOS.. It is not that complex.. Nov 1999 of Doc Dobbs Journal.

povray has the problem that it is object oriented in C, sort of.. haven't looked at the source for quite a few years but it was C with lotsa function pointers vtbls implemented in user code, not the easiest code to understand.

There are lots and lots of good ray tracers with source available.

Here are some short books I like:
Realistic Image Synthesis using photon mapping. ISBN 1-56881-147-0
Realistic Ray Tracing ISBN1-56881-110-1
Practical Parallel Rending ISBN156881-179-9
Multiprocessor methods for computer graphics rendering. ISBN 0-86720-229-7

Regan

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J5600, 2 x SUN, 2 x Mac, 3 x Alpha, 2 x RS/6000

Don't forget
P. Dutré, K. Bala, P. Bekaert: "Advanced Global Illumination",
and
M. Pharr and G. Humphreys, "Physically Based Rendering".

Also the comprehensive 2-volume classic:
A. Glassner, "Principles of Digital Image Synthesis"


--Roland

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"END OF LINE" (MCP)