Misc. Render Commands

Misc. Render Commands

Raytracing 

Introduction

Ray Tracing is a global illumination based rendering method. It traces rays of light from the eye

back through the image plane into the scene. Then the rays are tested against all objects in the

scene to determine if they intersect any objects. If the ray misses all objects, then that pixel is

shaded the background color. Ray tracing handles shadows, multiple specular reflections, and

texture mapping in a very easy straight-forward manner.

Note that ray tracing, like scan-line graphics, is a point sampling algorithm. We sample a

continuous image in world coordinates by shooting one or more rays through each pixel. Like all

point sampling algorithms, this leads to the potential problem of aliasing, which is manifested in

computer graphics by jagged edges or other nasty visual artifacts.

In ray tracing, a ray of light is traced in a backwards direction. That is, we start from the eye or

camera and trace the ray through a pixel in the image plane into the scene and determine what it

hits. The pixel is then set to the color values returned by the ray.

www.siggraph.org/education/ materials/HyperGraph/raytrace/rtrace0.htm

1. Choose View, Render, Render...

or

2. Type RENDER at the command prompt.

Command: render

3. Choose PhotoRaytrace as the render type.