HARMONHOUSE(tm) Designs: "A Holistic Design Studio" ~ Ray Tracing

HARMONHOUSE tm Designs

Ray Tracing

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Ray tracing is a way, by means of intensive computation, to calculate the color of each pixel in an image, on the basis of the path taken by each ray of light striking it, after it has been reflected and refracted by other objects in the image, or possibly outside the image frame, from which it originates, off which it bounces, or through which it passes on its convoluted journey into the eye of the camera, or viewer. This is a pretty amazing technology, possibly even akin to magic.

If you examine the image, you may notice that it is illuminated by two light sources, each of which, being of slightly different color, casts a slightly different-colored shadow; which is a little blurry, because they are not point-sources of light. The golden sphere on the "chess cube" has a surface which reflects the pattern of the chess board surface upon which it rests; and is also transparent, making visible a distorted image of the chessboard pattern behind it, and also filtering the color of the light passing through it. The chessboard is also a reflective surface, in which may be seen a reflection of the sphere, including a dim reflection of the sphere's reflection of the chessboard pattern.

All this is an illusion rendered by intensive mathematical calculation of the paths geometrically taken by rays of light interacting with objects placed so, and having the properties of color, reflectance, and refractance specified in the code rendered by the computer. Calling this process magic, although not strictly so, is not very far-fetched, either. In this medium, images are rendered, not with light, camera lense, and light-sensitive emulsion, or with brushes and pigments, but with meticulous descriptions of light sources, view angles, eye or camera location, and of objects of varying complexity within the x,y,z coordinate space of a virtual three-dimensional reality.

One of the appealing charms of this computer-aided art is the fact that images are geometrically / mathematically rendered; which means that if there is interest in a particular feature of a construction, which one would like to examine in greater detail, all that is necessary is to aim the camera at it, and narrow the angle of view, or reposition the camera closer to (including, if you wish, inside!) the desired object. Unlike working with a real camera, and real reflective objects, the camera is never reflected in the rendering.

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We are constantly expanding our graphic capabilities at HARMONHOUSE^TM Designs, and although we are at present (June, 2006) neophytes in the domain of ray-traced graphics, this is a field we are quite excited about, in part because of its potential for "photo-realistic" flights of imagination – and also because it's so much fun!