CSU540 Computer Graphics

Ray-Tracing Project

Professor Harriet Fell


Introduction

In this assignment, you will generate a realistic image of a 3-dimensional scene composed of spheres floating between you and the view plane. You will use ray-tracing and a local illumination model to generate your image.

General description

Develop your program in four stages.

  1. Generate a flat image using only ambient light. This way you will know that your program is finding the spheres before you go on to work on shading and shadows. ***(Shirley 10.1-10.3)
  2. Add shading to your image using Lambert's Law for diffuse lighting. ***(Shirley 9.1)
  3. Add shadows cast on the view plane by following a ray from each visible back-plane pixel to the light source. ***(Shirley 10.5)
  4. Finally, add shadows cast on the spheres by following a ray from a visible point on a sphere to the light source. ***(Shirley 10.5)


See Building a Ray Tracer - Page One for sample images. Note that the small images on that page are links to larger images.


Grading

These grading guidelines will be used for all programming assignments:
Your project will be graded on:

Submit the following: