Andrew Coppin wrote:

> I have also made a raytracer - in Java of all things! (Well, the original

Actually I have written it in Java first as well - I needed to learn java 
for my study. But it was a factor 3-10 slower than the c++ version.

> was made with Smalltalk - but who else actually has that?) Again, the only
> way to make it render things is to write [miles of] Java code to generate
> the appropreate datastructures. I suspect my little effort isn't nearly as
> full-featured as yours - but then, I had to reinvent raytracing from first
> principles! Considering I've never had a propper algebra lesson in my
> entire life, I'm pretty dam impressed I got the ray/shape intersection

While I already had algreba courses I pretty figgured out all the 
neccessary transformations for ray tracing myself... The nice thing was 
that when I came to think about how isosurfaces and volumetric media works 
I could perfectly make usage of the root finding and numerical integration 
techniques that I had been taught just before.

Actually I just today started having a graphic course which will bring me a 
bit deeper into the things and algorithms behind rendering.

> PS. Isn't building a raytracer with OOP so confusing? Which kind of
> "object" are you talking about... ;-)

Well, I called the objects' base class 'Object3D'. When you are talking of 
'classes' and 'instances' about OOP there is no name conflict.

- Micha

-- 
objects.povworld.org - The POV-Ray Objects Collection
book.povworld.org    - The POV-Ray Book Project

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