Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uupsi!sunic!news.funet.fi!cc.tut.fi!jk87377
From: jk87377@cc.tut.fi (Juhana Kouhia)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Rendering/Ray Tracing Software for MS-DOS and Macs?
Keywords: ray tracing, rendering, MS-DOS, Macs, PD
Message-ID: <1991Apr26.202036.14799@cc.tut.fi>
Date: 26 Apr 91 20:20:36 GMT
References: <707@aos.brl.mil>
Organization: Tampere University of Technology
Lines: 34


In article <707@aos.brl.mil> hinkle@vim.brl.mil (Gerald Hinkle ) writes:
>
>In case it isn't obvious, I'm just starting in 3D graphics.

How about starting from this book:

%A Andrew S. Glassner
%A Jim Arvo
%A Robert L. Cook
%A Eric Haines
%A Pat Hanrahan
%A Paul Heckbert
%A David B. Kirk
%B An Introduction to Ray Tracing
%E Andrew S. Glassner
%I Academic Press
%C London
%D 1989
%O earlier versions as course notes at SIGGRAPH '87 and '88

Programming your own ray tracer is more fun than copying from the
others. I assume that you would like to KNOW how the ray tracer works,
so take my advice.

If you use a ray tracer made by others, I bet that you don't use it
more than a couple of months and then you leave the program.
But if you make your own program you know how to add new features to
it and so you can make something new to it whenever you would like to.

And one point more: The ray tracers in the net are not so complex that
you can add to them whatever you like to.
They just are not so called test-bed programs.

Juhana Kouhia