8 replies to this topic

[Pon]

Hiya everyone. I'm Pon, obviously. For the last few weeks, I've been extensively researching ray tracing, and, to a much lesser extent, radiosity. This is because I want to make a ray tracing/radiosity/photon-mapping engine...:sleep:

I haven't written out any kind of design document, and, to be honest, this is as close as I've done so far... But here goes:

• It is to be as physically correct as current algorithms allow.
  
• It will be heavily optimized, but realism will always be of higher importance.
  
• Even though it will be slow NOW, if it is kept in working order, due to Moore's (I think :lol:) Law, it should be an attractive alternative renderer.
  
• Hopefully, I will create a full game engine on top of this, although it is highly improbable that I could do such a thing:blush:

Anyway, I would highly appreciate it if someone were to join me in my epic quest against the imperialist... Err... Sorry, I just watched Enemy At The Gates :wacko: But yeah, you hopefully get the idea.

[anubis]

http://www.devmaster...eries/part1.php

This will be without a doubt of great value to you then

edit : Never mind, I missed your otehr thread

[Reedbeta]

I'm actually already working on a raytracer with much the same goals as you describe. I haven't put up a website for it or any such (it's at a very early stage of development), but I hope one day it will become an attractive open-source (read: free) alternative to things like RenderMan and Mental Ray (the megalomaniac in me was speaking there, hehehe).

[bramz]

Haha, hi Reedbeta! =)

I'm working on my own ray tracer as well: "LiAR isn't a raytracer". It's no where near finished, there are still major features missing (and it's slow as hell too), but it's fun ... it's hosted by sourceforge, so it is open source already =) http://liar.sourceforge.net Currently, I'm struggling to get lights smoothly fit in the design ...

Bramz

[Axel]

There is also toxic in case somebody hasn't heard of it yet: http://www.toxicengine.org/

[roel]

http://www.yafray.org/

[Pon]

Hi everyone, thanks for all the replies... I think I made myself unclear before. When I said "it should be an attractive alternative renderer", I meant for a game engine, as opposed to rasterisation. Bramz, I must say that I am very impressed by your ray tracer, it looks stunning. Are you planning to use it for a modeling program or a game?

Roel and Axel: Both of those engines look awesome :D I especially love that YAFRAY vodka bottle picture :D:D:D

[anubis]

Quote

There is also toxic in case somebody hasn't heard of it yet: http://www.toxicengine.org/

Toxic is in a rather unfinished state though and hasn't been developed for quite some time now.

[bramz]

Thanks, though it's nowhere near the quality of yafray and toxic yet =) LiAR is written as a python module, and it is my hope i can connect it somehow to Blender (like yafray is). Of course, I won't be able to connect it as tight as Yafray is, since that would require changes in the Blender sources ...

It's not intended for a game. It's just terribly too slow for that. A RTRT for games requires a completely different design than LiAR has ... I have written an RTRT demo once but that code is just too damn ugly to be of any use anymore =)

BTW, you might be interested in the OpenRT project ...

Bramz