(or at least the ones I have seen...) Ok, some time ago I wrote a ray tracer (class project) and not so long ago I wrote a photon mapper (a different classes project). What I am wanting to do is to instead of making still images, I want to make a time based display (but keep in simple, say spheres moving around). Now, in this I have a few problems. First off, ray tracing cannot (at least on the level which I know it, which is intro level) be rendered quick enough to make a 'movie' (maybe around 15 fps) that is a couple seconds long without taking hours. As such, I was wondering if either there are up grades to standard ray tracing that improve this or if there is a better form of rendering out there for this, and if so, what is it called. Also, I don't have a clue how to: Put out image files of any non ppm format. Take said image files and change them into a video of some sort. I know there are programs, free and costly, which will do exactly what I am thinking of many times better than what I can produce, but I am wanting to try this as a learning exercise, and also to better understand what ever language I do this in (since I'm not sure how to use JIT in Java, and I don't know enough C# to even try this right now, I was thinking of either C or C++, but really leaning on the C++ side as I don't like doing pseudo OOP in C using structs, which is how my raytracer was programmed. So, to better facilitate responses, here is a list of questions. Is there a better way to render what I am trying to (and if yes, can you give me a name so I can go research/learn it)? If raytracing is a viable way to do this, what are some 'tricks' I can use to make the render time bearable? What is the best way to do this output (I was thinking different still images linked together)? If the still images linked together is a viable option, what image format would you suggest I use, and how in the world do you take multiple images of said file format and link them together into a video?

Well, after doing some more research, it seems that current interactive products (video games) use a mix of rasterisation and ray casting.

OP: download and view Heaven Seven, by exceed. You were looking for intro-level raytracing?

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=5

I suppose that if you want to do raytracing, then do it. If you want to do realtime, use DirecX or OpenGL, because writing a realtime raytracer requires great skills and hard work (I never attempted to make my raytracer realtime, I leave that to persons like phantomus (aka Jacco Bikker) :-)

Of course, things change if you want to do it all from scratch, without using existing libraries. Then writing a performant rasterizer will most probably be not much easier than a performant raytracer...