Ray tracing is a method for creating realistic 3D computer graphics images by simulating the path of light as it interacts with objects. It is used during rendering and can make scenes look more realistic, but is hardware intensive and not commonly used for real-time graphics. The process involves modeling objects, applying lighting and camera positions, animating, creating and applying textures, and rendering. Ray tracing uses complex algorithms to replicate how light interacts with objects and allows for more realistic lighting effects. It traces the path of light rays as they contact objects in the scene and creates a two-dimensional image. Ray tracing is historically used for pre-rendered 3D scenes and not real-time rendering for video games.
Ray tracing is a method for rendering three-dimensional (3D) computer graphics images to create as realistic an image as possible. This method is used during rendering and does not necessarily affect how a scene or object is modeled or textured. The rendering process typically involves beams generated to simulate the path of light as it interacts with objects, in order to more accurately analyze how objects will reflect, refract, and absorb light. Ray tracing can create remarkably realistic rendered scenes, but the process is also quite hardware intensive and has not been commonly used for real-time graphics.
The process of creating a 3D scene using computer graphics typically involves four or five major steps: modeling the objects, applying lighting and camera positions, animating if necessary, creating and applying textures to the objects, and then rendering of the scene. Each of these steps can be time-consuming, and the overall process usually consists of many more components than those discussed in this analysis. The final stage of this process, rendering, is when ray tracing can be used to make the rendered product look much more realistic.
In the real world, people perceive objects around them due to light interacting with those objects and then being received by people’s eyes. Light can typically interact in one of four main ways: absorption, reflection, refraction, and fluorescence. Ray tracing uses fairly complex algorithms to replicate this behavior and allow objects in a scene to interact with light as realistically as possible. The person or team creating a 3D scene models, textures, and creates light sources and a camera within a scene, then rendering can be done using ray tracing.
Rather than evaluating how light travels from a light source to objects and interacts with those objects, it is often easier to work backwards from the camera and imagine that light is emitted by the camera, interacts with objects, and ultimately ends up at the light source . This allows you to ignore light rays that wouldn’t be captured by the camera, instead of wasting processing power on aspects of the scene that won’t be rendered. Ray tracing effectively traces the path that light rays take as they contact objects in the scene, then traces the final paths these rays take as they approach the camera in a two-dimensional plane.
This plane is the image that is created and displayed using ray tracing rendering. The resulting image is much more realistic in regards to lighting and the way light plays on objects of various shapes and made of highly reflective or refractive materials. Glass, shiny metal, and shiny plastic are all material types that can look much more realistic with this path than many other forms of rendering.
However, the process of analyzing these light rays is quite laborious and most computers historically did not have the processing power to do it. This is why ray tracing was mostly used for pre-rendered 3D scenes, such as still images of cars for commercials or scenes from a movie. Real-time rendering for video games, on the other hand, has typically used simpler forms of rendering to allow the scene to be rendered during gameplay.
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