sugtech@lll-lcc.UUcp (SUG Tech Committee) (02/15/86)
I am working on a masters thesis at Brigham Young University. The subject of my thesis is ray tracing, and I need some ray tracing source code. Just a listing will do. The code must not be proprietary in any form, and it doesn't matter if it's simple or complex. A Whitted algorithm would be tandy and a distributed ray tracing algorithm would be super. If anyone can help, please give me a "ring". Ernie Pyle lll-lcc!sugtech@lll-crg.arpa
ugsudy@sunybcs.UUCP (Sudhakar Bharadwaj) (07/16/86)
I saw a few articles on Ray Tracing. I am trying to implement Ray Tracing algorithms on 4 Mercury Zip 32016 Array Processors connected to a Unix Machine with 5 MC68000's. The intersection algorithms will be run on the Mercurys and user I/O, Communications, and display will be run on the 68000's. Basically, I will do 1 scanline at a time, checking for intersections, calculations shading, reflection and refraction values inside the mercurys. I am planning to have 1 mercury for preliminary calculations for the intersections, another for the intersections (maybe even the third one also, or maybe the third for cleaning up - shading/reflection/refraction) and the fourth for any final calculations (if I can get around to it, the fourth one will have a frame buffer attached to an auxliary port of the mercury and the image will be displayed upon completion of each scanline, that will save the time of trasnfering 1 scanline of pixel information back to the 68000's). Vectorizing Ray Tracing is not that bad, once you know that you are tracing 1024 x 1024 rays with 1 particular object, so that the same intersection algorithm can be run. This subject does seem to provoke more interest then I thought it would. Does anyone out there have any benchmark figures to show how much a reduction in time an algorithm using an array processor yields?
fritzz@net1.UCSD.EDU (Friedrich Knauss) (08/07/86)
It's back, and it's better. There were several of you who sent me mail asking for the last refraction update (about 80 or so), so I figured that this would be worth doing right. I just posted tracer version 2.0 net net.sources, and it is a definite improvement over version 1.0. It isn't very compatible with version one either, which is why I chose to repost the whole shebang. None of the problems that were around in the old one should be in the new one (I hope), and the code should run a little faster except for the refraction routines which are doubly recursive and very long. (with lots of sqrts and other nasty stuff). It is still meant to be a hackers toy, so feel free to go in and chew it up. If there are any people you know of that want it but aren't on the net please feel free to pass it on. As usual, post good comments to net graphics, and send all suggestions, comments and requests to (fritzz@net1 || ...sdcsvax!net1!fritzz) f
nwh@gec-rl-hrc.co.uk (Nigel Holder Marconi) (08/08/86)
would some kind sole please post via email (or whatever) parts 1 and 2 of the ray tracing C program. Thanks in advance .. Nigel Holder UK JANET: yf21@uk.co.gec-mrc.u Marconi Research, ARPA: yf21%u.gec-mrc.co.uk@ucl-cs Chelmsford, Essex. CM2 8HN. +44 245 73331 ext. 3219 / 3214