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RaytracingEngine

Raytracing Engines

Raytracing engines are the most visual impressive of all 3D engines. They bear some similarity to Raycasting engines.

The idea of a raytracing engine is to determine the color of each pixel by drawing a theoretical "ray" from the screen into the world. At the first intersection, the color is calculated by the angle of incidence, lighting, and the color of the object at the point that is intersected, as well as many other things.

As you might guess, this operation is fairly expensive when it is done for a full screen (in the range of 64,000 - 480,000 or even more pixels). It is very rarely done in real time. Instead, it is usually a tool that is used to render sprites or backgrounds that appear 3D. It is also used as a tool to create movies (Toy Story was completely ray-traced). Most Isometric engines use graphics that were produced with a raytracer.

last edited (December 14, 2002) by Doctor Slush, Number of views: 2982, Current Rev: 2 (Diff)

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