Ray Tracing Basics

Reading
Required:
• Foley et al., 16.12
• Important: study the textbook before attempting project 3 if
you want to save hours of debugging!
Optional (recommended):
• Hearn & Baker, 14.6
• Glassner, chapter 1
 Geometric optics
• Modern theories of light treat it as both a wave and a particle.
• We will take a combined and somewhat simpler view of light -
the view of geometric optics.
• Here are the rules of geometric optics:
– Light is a flow of photons with wavelengths. We’ll call these
flows “light rays.”
– Light rays travel in straight lines in free space.
– Light rays do not interfere with each other as they cross.
– Light rays obey the laws of reflection and refraction.
– Light rays travel from the light sources to the eye, but the
physics is invariant under path reversal (reciprocity)
 Ray Tracing
• A term from optics
• A “physical” simulation of the particle theory of light
• In the 1960s, ray tracing seemed like a great idea, but nobody
could do it well enough to beat cheaper image synthesis
methods.
• These days, we can follow the simulation deeply enough to get
great results!
• But there are some visual phenomena that ray tracing cannot
do.
 Why Ray Tracing?
• So far, we can do ray casting:
– for each pixel in the projection plane, find the object visible
at that pixel and
– color that pixel according to the object color
• What does this model miss? What if the object is reflective?
Light Source

Object
Eye Ray

Object
Light Source
 Forward Ray Tracing
• Rays emanate from light sources and bounce around in the scene.
• Rays that pass through the projection plane and enter the eye contribute
to the final image.

• What’s wrong with this method?

 Backward Ray Tracing
• (Efficiency!) Rather than propagating rays indiscriminately from
light sources, we’d like to ask “which rays will definitely
contribute to the final image?”
• We can get a good approximation of the answer by firing rays
from the eye, through the projection plane and into the scene
– These are the paths that light must have followed to affect
the image
 Eye vs. light ray tracing
• Where does light begin?
• At the light: light ray tracing (a.k.a. forward ray tracing or
photon tracing)

• At the eye: ray tracing (a.k.a. backward ray tracing)

 Precursors to ray tracing
Local illumination
• Cast one eye ray, then shade according to light

Appel (1968)
• Cast one eye ray + one ray to light
 Whitted ray-tracing algorithm
• In 1980, Turner Whitted introduced ray tracing to the graphics
community.
– Combines backward ray tracing + rays to light
– Recursively traces rays

Algorithm:
1. For each pixel, trace a eye (primary) ray in direction V to the first
visible surface (or ray casting).
2. For each intersection, trace secondary rays.
• Shadow rays in directions Li to light sources.
• Reflected ray in direction R.
• Refracted ray or transmitted ray in direction T.
 Kinds of (Backward) Rays
• Three kinds of rays
– Shadow rays
– Reflection rays Light Source
– Transparency rays
Shadow Ray

Object
Eye Ray

Shadow Ray
Object
Light Source
 Kinds of (Backward) Rays
• A ray that leaves the eye and travels out to the scene is called a primary ray.
• When a ray hits an object, we spawn three new (backward) rays to collect light that must
contribute to the incoming primary ray:
– Shadow rays to light sources, used to attenuate incoming light when applying the shading
model
– Reflection rays, which model light bouncing off of other surfaces before hitting this surface
– Transparency rays, which model light refracting through the surface before leaving along
the primary ray

Light Source

Shadow Ray
Object
Eye Ray

• Shadow rays stop at light sources, but reflection and transparency rays behave just like primary
rays! Shadow Ray
Object
Light Source
Whitted algorithm
Example of Ray Tracing
 Ray Tree
• A primary ray hits a surface and spawns reflection and
transparency rays. Those rays may hit surfaces and spawn their
own rays, etc.
• We can represent this process schematically using a ray tree:
 Controlling Tree Depth
• Ideally, we’d spawn child rays at every object intersection
forever, getting a “perfect” color for the primary ray.
• In practice, we need heuristics for bounding the depth of the
tree (i.e., recursion depth)
 Shading
• A ray is defined by an origin p and a
unit direction d and is parameterized
by t:
p+td

• Let I(P,d) be the intensity seen along that ray. Then:

I(P,d) = Idirect + Ireflected + Itransmitted

where
– Idirect is computed from the Phong model
– Ireflected = krI(Q,R)
– Itransmitted = ktI(Q,T)

• Typically, we set kr = ks and kt = 1 - ks if there is no diffuse

reflection.
Reflection and transmission
Өi Өr

rt

Өt

• Law of reflection: Өi = Өr

• Snell’s law of refraction: risinӨi = rtsinӨt

where ri and rt are indices of refraction.
 Total internal reflection
• The equation for the angle of refraction can be computed from
Snell’s law.
• What happens when Өi > Өt?
• When Өt is exactly 90 deg, we say that Өi has achieved “critical
angle” Өc.
• For Өi > Өc., no rays are transmitted, and only reflection occurs,
a phenomenon known as “total internal reflection” or TIR.
 A Recursive Ray Tracer
• Now, put everything together…
 Ray tracing pseudocode
• We build a ray traced image by casting rays through each of the
pixels:
Ray tracing pseudocode (cont)
 Shade
• Next, we need to calculate the color returned by the shade
function.
 Shadow attenuation
• Computing a shadow can be as simple as checking to see if a ray
makes it to the light source.
• For a point light source:

• Q: What if there are transparent objects along a path to the light

source?
 Epsilons!!
• Due to finite precision arithmetic, we do not always get the
exact intersection at a surface.

• Q: What kinds of problems might this cause?

• Q: How might we resolve this?

 How to resolve this?
#define <math.h>

#define ZERO(a) (fabs(a) < 1e-5)

double t = 0.0;

// for ray
vec3 r = P + d*t;
// if you have done some double precision computation on t
// no shadow attenuation
if (ZERO(t))
… ..
light

L
light

L
light

L
 Intersecting with xformed geometry

• In general, objects will be placed using transformations. What if

object being intersected were transformed by a matrix M?

• Apply M-1 to the ray first and intersect in object (local)

coordinates!

• The intersected normal is in object (local) coordinates. How do

we transform it to world coordinates?
 Summary
• Understanding of basic ray tracing concepts
• Forward vs. backward tracing
• Classification of rays
• The ray tree
• Terminating recursion