Chapter 11
Ray Tracing

Overview

In Section 1, we develop a data type for surfaces in space that maintains important connectivity data and surface normals. The new data type is especially important for preparing ray-tracing input from Mathematica graphics. Section 2 discusses ray tracing and Section 3 treats conversion utilities for preparing input from Mathematica graphics for two popular ray-tracing programs, POVray and rayshade. Section 4 shows how the color plates were generated. Finally, Section 5 shown an application: ray-traced stereo pairs of images that can give a true three-dimensional appearance.

Ray tracers make it feasible to produce stunning images with moderate effort. The graphics conversion programs described here allow you to tap Mathematica potential to easily create input for ray tracing.

Programs

SurfaceGraphics3D.m

rayshade.m

RayWalk.m

POVray.m

Color Plates

Plate 4-a

Plate 4-b

Plate 4-c

Plate 7

Plate 9

Plate 10

Plate 11-a

Plate 11-b

Plate 12

Plate 13

Plate 16

Additional Material

raypic1.pov

POVray input for Plate 10.

raypic8.ray

Rayshade input for Plate 12.

Resources on the Internet

The POVray home page

The home page for the POVray program. By the time you read this, the new version POVray 3.0 should be available. Consult the update page for the availability of a new version of POVray.m supporting POVray 3.0.

Rayshade Homepage

The home page for the Rayshade program with documentation, samples, and the source distribution.