What is 3D Ray Tracing?
Generally speaking, ray tracing is the calculation of a light ray from the point of view or camera to the light source.
The reverse (from the light to the camera/point of view) is known as Backward ray tracing.
Ray tracing technology is typically noted for its capability to generate super-realistic reflections and refractions in renderings.
However, the concept of ray tracing can be taken much further to include effects such as soft shadows and caustics (light refraction in water).
In the next few sections, we will explore some concepts surrounding ray tracing and, more specifically, ray tracing in your 3D Application.
Recursive Ray trace: The method of backward ray tracer closely emulates the physics of light in the real world.
Essentially, infinitely thin light rays are emitted from all light sources in all directions.
Of the millions of rays cast, the ones that bounce or intersect surfaces eventually end up hitting the camera.
The result is that each rendered pixel on the screen is made up of several rays traced from one or more light sources, each ray having interacted with one or more objects in your scene.
More importantly, millions of rays are cast in directions that never approach the camera.
As you can imagine, computational times would be outlandishly high if you tried to trace the rays from the light source to the camera because rays are cast in all directions.
Since we are only concerned with the rays that actually hit the screen, 3D Application works from the camera out and only figures out the rays that determine each pixel.
More specifically, a 3D Application uses the most popular ray tracing technique called recursive ray tracing.
In recursive ray tracing, each time a ray bounces or intersects some surface, it spawns a new ray-usually traveling in another direction.
Each bounce or intersection is called a recursion.
In 3D Application, you can control the number of recursions by setting the Ray Depth variable.
The default is nine, but you may need more depending on the complexity of your scene.
There is a quick way to see if you have a high enough setting for Ray Depth.
To the right of the maximum Depth setting is an option for what the Ray tracer should do if a ray reaches its maximum depth and never gets to a light source.
Under Color to Use at 3D Application Depth, you can choose to render the background or you can specify a certain color.
The only time you would ever need to use this feature is to test if your Ray Depth setting is too low.
3D Application's Ray tracer engine is adaptive so there is no need to specify a minimum value-the Ray tracer automatically finds the lowest possible number of ray bounces each pixel needs.
Believe it or not, most surfaces need only one or two bounces.
The reverse (from the light to the camera/point of view) is known as Backward ray tracing.
Ray tracing technology is typically noted for its capability to generate super-realistic reflections and refractions in renderings.
However, the concept of ray tracing can be taken much further to include effects such as soft shadows and caustics (light refraction in water).
In the next few sections, we will explore some concepts surrounding ray tracing and, more specifically, ray tracing in your 3D Application.
Recursive Ray trace: The method of backward ray tracer closely emulates the physics of light in the real world.
Essentially, infinitely thin light rays are emitted from all light sources in all directions.
Of the millions of rays cast, the ones that bounce or intersect surfaces eventually end up hitting the camera.
The result is that each rendered pixel on the screen is made up of several rays traced from one or more light sources, each ray having interacted with one or more objects in your scene.
More importantly, millions of rays are cast in directions that never approach the camera.
As you can imagine, computational times would be outlandishly high if you tried to trace the rays from the light source to the camera because rays are cast in all directions.
Since we are only concerned with the rays that actually hit the screen, 3D Application works from the camera out and only figures out the rays that determine each pixel.
More specifically, a 3D Application uses the most popular ray tracing technique called recursive ray tracing.
In recursive ray tracing, each time a ray bounces or intersects some surface, it spawns a new ray-usually traveling in another direction.
Each bounce or intersection is called a recursion.
In 3D Application, you can control the number of recursions by setting the Ray Depth variable.
The default is nine, but you may need more depending on the complexity of your scene.
There is a quick way to see if you have a high enough setting for Ray Depth.
To the right of the maximum Depth setting is an option for what the Ray tracer should do if a ray reaches its maximum depth and never gets to a light source.
Under Color to Use at 3D Application Depth, you can choose to render the background or you can specify a certain color.
The only time you would ever need to use this feature is to test if your Ray Depth setting is too low.
3D Application's Ray tracer engine is adaptive so there is no need to specify a minimum value-the Ray tracer automatically finds the lowest possible number of ray bounces each pixel needs.
Believe it or not, most surfaces need only one or two bounces.