minray - A simple ray tracer

Notes

Usage: minray scenefile [--debug]

This program ray traces the provided scene and draws it using OpenGL. During tracing, the following interface is shown:

Scene content:
 Shapes             | 4
 Point Lights       | 1
 Area Lights        | 1
Scene settings:
 Height             | 800
 Width              | 800
 Max Recursion      | 10
 Antialiasing       | ON
Ray tracing progress
====================

If the --debug flag is used, the following settings are used instead:

Scene content:
 Shapes             | 4
 Point Lights       | 1
 Area Lights        | 1
Scene settings:
 Height             | 400
 Width              | 400
 Max Recursion      | 5
 Antialiasing       | OFF
Ray tracing progress
====================

The scenefiles read by this program are slightly different than the one shown in the assignment. The following is a short, valid scenefile:

# Last Run
#
# Scene content:
#  Shapes             | 4
#  Point Lights       | 1
#  Area Lights        | 1
# Scene settings:
#  Height             | 800
#  Width              | 800
#  Max Recursion      | 10
#  Antialiasing       | ON
# Ray tracing progress
# ====================
# ====================
# Elapsed time [mm:ss] - 03:52
#

# Ambient light must be first instruction
amb: .3 .3 .3

# Spheres have position, radius, and material
sphere
pos: -1 0.5 -0.5
rad: 0.75
mat: .3 .3 .3 .5 .5 .5 20 0.9

# material is Diffuse, Specular, Phong exponent, and Reflection index

# Triangles have a texture (filename or null) and three vertices.
# Each vertex has position, normal, material (as above), and uv
# coordinates
triangle
tex: scenes/checker.bmp
pos: -10 -2 10
nor: 0 1 0
mat: 0.60648 0.22648 0 0.628281 0.555802 0.366065 50 0.6
uv: 0 0
pos: -10 -2 -10
nor: 0 1 0
mat: 0.60648 0.22648 0 0.628281 0.555802 0.366065 50 0.6
uv: 0 1
pos: 10 -2 -10
nor: 0 1 0
mat: 0.60648 0.22648 0 0.628281 0.555802 0.366065 50 0.6
uv: 1 1

# Point lights and area lights are the same as described in the
# assignment
point-light
pos: 1 1 3 
col: 0.8 0.8 0.8

area-light
pos: 0.125 2.0 0
pos: 0.125 2.0 -0.125
pos: -0.125 2.0 -0.125
pos: -0.125 2.0 0
col: 1.0 1.0 1.0

Some example scene files are in the scenes/ directory.

Completed requirements

Triangle intersection
Sphere intersection
Triangle texture mapping
Sphere & triangle Phong shading
Antialiasing (4X supersampling)
Recursive reflection (10 recursion limit)
Test scene (images/final/redSpheres.png or blueSpheres.png)

Completed extra credit

Shadow rays - I showed this at the presentation.
Soft shadow for area light source - This is new. The updated final images in images/final/ have area lights, so this should be easy to verify.

Future enhancements

Non-naive (O(n^2)) collision detection
Texture instancing
Movable camera
"Preview" mode
Break dependency on Windows-format bitmaps

Files included in archive

// This file
README.md

// Solution file
minray.sln

// Source directory
CS535Program5/

	// main routine
	main.cpp

	// Raytracing and drawing routines
	Scene.cpp
	Scene.h

	// Read scene file and load objects
	SceneLoader.cpp
	SceneLoader.h

	// Scene objects
	Ray.h
	Shape.h
	Sphere.h
	Triangle.h

	// Lights
	AreaLight.h
	PointLight.h

	// Loads Windows format 24bit BGR bitmaps
	Bitmap.cpp
	Bitmap.h

	// Useful constants, enums, and functions
	Globals.h

	// Scene description files and textures
	scenes/
		blueSpheres.txt
		checker.bmp
		planet.bmp
		redSpheres.txt
		test.txt

	// Screenshots
	images/

		// Test scene and two scenes I made
		final/
			blueSpheres.png
			redSpheres.png
			test.png

		// Images showing progression from just having
		// Phong shading to reflections to shadow rays
		// to soft shadows.
		progress/
			progress1.png
			progress2.png
			progress3.png
			progress4.png
			progress5.png
			progress6.png
			progress7.png
			progress8.png
			progress9.png


	// Visual Studio files
	CS535Program5.vcxproj
	CS535Program5.vcxproj.filters
	CS535Program5.vcxproj.user

	// Vector math library
	glm/
		(There's a lot of files here)

Acknowledgements

GLM OpenGL Math Library
Information about Triangle intersection and Barycentric Coordinates

Contact

Christopher D. Parks, chris.parks@uky.edu

cdparks/minray