Generating High Quality Pictures by Ray-Tracing

Abstract

Ray-casting techniques provide a very general framework in which many problems can be solved in a much easier way than with conventional methods. This is particularly true for the illumination model when a high level of realism is required. Another interesting feature of ray-casting is its ability to display a wide class of algebraic surfaces with a minimum of approximation. Both aspects are developed in this paper where a full lighting model, based on a theoretical approach, is presented. Then, an algorithm for the display of surfaces of revolution is described.Computation time is the major drawback of ray-tracing. Special purpose parallel processors seem to offer a good price/performance ratio compared to the use of supercomputers.