[edited by - Elite19 on October 8, 2003 4:54:52 AM]
What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Author
Hi, I am interested in making a simple 3d app and a raytracer to render its scenes. I am confused on how the program will write out its scene file and the renderer will read that file. Should I write the raytracer first then create the app? Would it be easier to write a raytracer if you already have written the scene description? how does a raytracers read a scene file?
Any help with this stuff would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks
[edited by - Elite19 on October 8, 2003 4:54:52 AM]
[edited by - Elite19 on October 8, 2003 4:54:52 AM]
The egg game first.
At some point in pre-history an ancestor of the chicken - but not a chicken itself - had an egg containing mutated offspring that was a chicken.
As for the raytracing, I''d write the renderer part first, so you have some idea of what the requirements for your scene description will be.
At some point in pre-history an ancestor of the chicken - but not a chicken itself - had an egg containing mutated offspring that was a chicken.
As for the raytracing, I''d write the renderer part first, so you have some idea of what the requirements for your scene description will be.
Author
lol
well this wasnt exactly what i had in mind
Maybe i should have asked, What came first, the renderer or the modeller?
well this wasnt exactly what i had in mind
Maybe i should have asked, What came first, the renderer or the modeller?
Deleted a ton of offtopic replies. This is not the lounge, folks. Any further reply containing the words ''evolution'', ''creationism'' or ''God'' will be immediately deleted, so don''t waste your time. Thank you.
Elite19: The renderer came first. The first raytracers used a script based language to describe the scene geometry. Lots still do, for example POV Ray or RenderMan. Basically, you have a file containing the scene as an abstract definition:
sphere (100,0,0) 50
This would define a sphere with a radius of 50 units, at the position 100,0,0.
Now, I would recommend writing the raytracer/renderer first. Either you also use such a simple script to build the scene, or you use an existing modeller. The later is probably more appropriate for complex scenes. Once your raytracer works, then you can start working on the editor/modeller.
Elite19: The renderer came first. The first raytracers used a script based language to describe the scene geometry. Lots still do, for example POV Ray or RenderMan. Basically, you have a file containing the scene as an abstract definition:
sphere (100,0,0) 50
This would define a sphere with a radius of 50 units, at the position 100,0,0.
Now, I would recommend writing the raytracer/renderer first. Either you also use such a simple script to build the scene, or you use an existing modeller. The later is probably more appropriate for complex scenes. Once your raytracer works, then you can start working on the editor/modeller.
Personally, I started by manually creating spheres, lights, or whatever in code, and copying the data straight to the renderer''s memory. Once the rendering worked I wrote a parser to load a simple script format.
same here, renderer first.. then some simple textfile with scene info, and then an own editor if needed..
If that''s not the help you''re after then you''re going to have to explain the problem better than what you have. - joanusdmentia
davepermen.net
If that''s not the help you''re after then you''re going to have to explain the problem better than what you have. - joanusdmentia
davepermen.net
Chances are, it would be simpler to plan out both your raytracer and your application in detail first, then write the raytracer and make the application after that. In any nontrivial context the application is going to be much more complex than the raytracer, and once you''ve made the raytracer you''ll have much more of an idea how the application should go, whereas if you wrote the application first, you couldn''t really test it without the raytracer up and running.
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