Hallo, I am a new user here, so first I would like to say thank you for such a nice community. I have been browsing the forums for a few months now, reading and following a few discussions. I can’t contribute with much right now, as I am still learning, but like all others I have my share of questions. I am mostly interested in programming related to computer graphics and 3d animation, as it is from there I have my background (or what ever you would call it). I have started writing a small ray tracer as a learning project, but I am having problems with getting my head around everything. I bought the “Physically Based Rendering : From Theory to Implementation” book a few weeks ago and it turned out to be great in explaining the different parts of the ray tracer (so of the stuff was way to advanced for me), but I feel that it failed in putting all the parts together. What I am looking for is something like a source code for a basic ray tracer which I can look at to get a better picture of how the different parts of it work together. I know there is one at gameDev, but I find the code hard to follow, as it is almost without comments. So does anyone here know of a place where I can look at the source code for a basic ray tracer? The ones I have found turned out to be much to advanced, the simpler the better, is I just want to know the structure of it, everything else is explained fine in the book I have. Also, other articles or tutorials on basic ray tracing stuff are much welcomed. Sorry for the essay and thanks for your time Ole Kristian H.

Here is a great series of articles that build a raytracer from scratch.

Thanks for the link, but I have allready seen it. That one, as well as the book, focuses mainly on the different ways of adding shadow and color, while I am more interested in how a ray is created and how to determine what it hits and when.

Hope this made sense, it feels like my writting skills are bad today :P

Ultimate Game Programming has a series of "demos" of various raytracers. I believe the concept of how a ray is created is less complex. To determine where it hit and when is more of vector calculus, optics, or physics problem.

From google I found you some various sites that might be of interest:
http://www.mandelbrot-dazibao.com/Raytuto/Raytuto.htm
http://www.groovyvis.com/other/raytracing/index.html
A Plain English Raytracing Tutorial

Quote:Original post by DevLiquidKnight
Ultimate Game Programming has a series of "demos" of various raytracers. I believe the concept of how a ray is created is less complex. To determine where it hit and when is more of vector calculus, optics, or physics problem.

From google I found you some various sites that might be of interest:
http://www.mandelbrot-dazibao.com/Raytuto/Raytuto.htm
http://www.groovyvis.com/other/raytracing/index.html
A Plain English Raytracing Tutorial

Thank you very much for you help. This is exactly what I was looking for :)