How many raytracers have you written? I think I must have done 20 or so, some really simple and specific for a demo, others more generic and one even professional.
This is just one more of those raytracers, done during 2001 and rebumped in 2003 after I read read about Renderman (by Pixar) and the word "shader" for the first
time in my life. Well, then since everything has been about shaders around me.
This page contains some images and a video of that my first incursion in the for me new world of shaders. I did everything in software rendering, with raytracing. I of course implemented the very more basic shaders I could find in the paper, but at least I made a clear separation between surface, light and volumetric shaders in the design of the code. That paper was such a revelation to me, and the reason for me to buy a graphics card rith that same week and start learning OpenGL and hardware shaders the month after (which result was Paradise). The two weeks test raytracer contained the following features:
Raster space antialiasing
Time antialiasing
Camera exposition simulation
Surface shaders (procedural texturing and lighting)
Volume shaders (procedural volumetric effects, see first video)
Reflections, refractions, shadows
Able of raytrace spheres, cylindres, cubes, planes, cones, revolution objects, 3d julias and polygonal meshes.
