Ray Tracing

Dr. T. JOSHVA DEVADAS

Professor-CSE
SOC
KARE
 Introduction to Ray-
Tracing

Ray Tracing.
global illumination.
purpose of Ray Tracing?
 Introduction to Ray-
Tracing
Basic Setup
Introduction to Ray-
tracing
Modeling Rendering
Properties of Light Rays
Light Travels in Straight Lines.
Two Light rays do not interfere with
each other if they cross.
Light rays travel from light source to the
eye, but physics for path reversal is
same.
 Light Object
Intersection
Reflection v/s Transmission
 Light Object
Intersection
Specular v/s Diffusion
 Types of Ray Tracing
Forward Ray Tracing
 Types of Ray Tracing
Backward Ray Tracing
 Types of Ray Tracing
Hybrid ray tracing
Whitted(1980) Backward Ray tracing + rays to light
source
 Types of Ray Tracing
Hybrid ray tracing.
1. Heckbert (1990).
backward ray tracing + forward ray tracing +
storage on surface.
2. Veach (1995).
backward ray tracing + forward ray tracing +
connecting lines.
Ray Tracing Algorithm
 Ray Tracing Algorithm
For( every pixel in the view port)
{
for(every object in the model world)
{
if(ray-object intersection)
{
select the front most intersection;
recursively trace the reflection and refraction rays;
calculate color;
}
}
}
Practical Considerations
in writing a Ray Tracer
Creating Model
Generate primary rays and test for
object ray interaction
Shadow Ray
Output file
 Intersections
One of the basic routine needed by the ray tracer is an intersection
routine for each type of object in the scene: one for spheres, one for
cubes , one for cones, one for polygons and so forth.
If ray-object intersections occur, objects intersection routine returns the
distance of intersection point from the origin of the ray, the normal
vector at the point of intersection and if texture mapping is used , a
coordinate mapping between the intersection point and textured image.
Distance is used to choose the closest intersection point.
Normal vector is used to determine the shade at the point, since it
describes which direction the surface is faced and therefore how much
light the point receives, called cosine shading.
 Intersection With
Sphere
P=point of intersection
 Intersection With
Sphere
V2 + b2 = c2 and d2 + b2 = r2 by simple geometry.
And so d = sqrt(r2 – ( c2 - v2 )).
If d >= 0 then a valid intersection occurs , if ray does not intersect d < 0.
The distance from point of intersection to the origin of ray is v-d, can be found by
the following pseudo code.
V=dot_product(EO, V).
disc=r2 – ((dot_product(EO, EO) -V2 ).
If (disc < 0).
no intersection.
Else.
d=sqrt(disc);
p=E+(V-d)*V.
Color and Shading and
Texture Mapping
Flat Shading.
Cook-Torrance method.
Lambertian Shading / Cosine Shading.
computes the angle between the intersection point and the normal
vector of the surface, to determine the shading of the surface at that
point.
Ambient Coefficient, Diffuse Coefficient their importance.

Assigning an entire image to an object

instead of a single color is Texture
mapping.
 Rendering Effects
Created by Ray Tracing
Shadowing
 Rendering Effects
Created by Ray Tracing
Reflection
 Rendering Effects
Created by Ray Tracing
Transparency
 Rendering Effects
Created by Ray Tracing
Refraction
 Precision Problem-the
Self Shadowing Problem
Passing a flag to the recursive routine to tell a point is on the surface or not.
Assuming that all rays start with a tolerance(say 0.000001 inches) of the surface of
the primitive shape.
 Aliasing
What is Aliasing.
Types of Aliasing.
Temporal Aliasing.
Due to limitations of eye.
Spatial Aliasing.
Missing of object falling between two rays.

Anti Aliasing.
Types of Anti-Aliasing
Techniques
Super Sampling
Adaptive Super Sampling / Monte-Carlo
Sampling
Stochastic Ray Tracing/ Distributed Ray
Tracing
Statistical Super sampling
 Optimization
Need for Optimization
Ray Tracing is computationally intensive
process. Eg: The film ToyStory with
110,000 frames, took 46 days to render
on 117 Sun Sparc 20’s.
Time taken for Ray tracing
Number of Objects x number of rays.
Accelerating Ray Tracing
Use faster machines.
Use specialized hardware, especially
parallel processors.
Reduce the total number of rays that
need to intersect with the world.
Reduce the number of Ray-Object
intersections.
Accelerating Ray Tracing
Reducing the number of rays that hit
the world.
eg: backward ray tracing, reduces the
total number of rays by not
considering those that are not
captured by the camera.
 Acceleration Techniques
Overview
Ray Tracing Accelerating Techniques

Faster Intersections Fewer Rays Generalized Rays

Faster Ray Fewer Ray

Object Adaptive Beam Tracing
Object
Intersections Tree Depth
Intersections Cone Tracing

Object Bounding Pencil Tracing

Bounding volume
Volumes hierarchies
Efficient Space sub division
intersection
routines Directional
techniques
 Bounding Volumes
Enclosing Groups of objects in sets of bounding volumes and first test for
intersection with the bounding volume.
 Spatial Subdivision
Uniform Non uniform
 Spatial Subdivision
K-d Tree BSP Tree
 Spatial Subdivision
Uniform v/s Non uniform
Uniform easier to traverse
Non uniform can be faster
Non uniform more memory efficient
Non Uniform good for scenes where object density varies
circle= volumes, squares = objects

Uniform spatial
subdivision
Bounding Non uniform
volume spatial
subdivision
 Issues in Spatial
Subdivision
The same ray may test the same object
for intersection multiple times.Mailbox?
Need to make sure the intersection
occurs in that voxel.
Directional Techniques
Directional Cube : Axis aligned cube
with side length=2.
(±1 , ±1 , ± 1)
Directional Techniques-
Light Buffer
Preprocessing Step to ray tracing, to
speed up calculations of shadows.
Form a directional cube around point
light.
Candidate lists for each window are
formed.
Check for shadows using distance t0
Adaptive Depth Control
Rays are attenuated as they pass
through the scene.
Uses properties of materials like
reflection coefficient , refraction
coefficient and global property like
distance attenuation factor.
 Generalized Rays
Uses an entire family of rays bundled as
beams, cones or pencils
Uses of using these rays are
effective antialiasing

additional optical effects

Some sacrifices needed are

types of primitive objects may need to be restricted
the computation of exact intersection needed to be abandoned
 Limitations of Ray
Tracing
Slow.
Good for ideal environment.
View Dependent.
Not good at rendering in real time.
Alternatives to ray tracing.
Ray casting.
Radiosity.
 Conclusion
Any optimization technique is scene
bounded, eg: bounding volumes
technique depends upon the density of
objects, if more than some threshold
use some other method.