I am searching a book that explains the basic concepts behind ray tracers.
I must also mention that although this whole subject is quite complicated i would like to find a book explaining everything in simplicity while showing code examples…
Any suggestions??
dont know of any books, but this website has quite a bit of information.
it also takes you through all the steps to create a modern raytracer:
Physically Based Rendering: http://www.pbrt.org/
The book is about 1000 pages, and it’s also a computer program. It was put together using literate programming tools which means that the book and the software were developed simultaneously.
BONES! That book project is cool. Now just to optimize it enough that animations can be made without a farm of computers.
By the way what happened to Blenders Caustics ? I know someone was hacking it in.
‘that book project’ (PBRT) is also the base for the Luxrender project: http://www.luxrender.net/
but it’s not so much about raytracing, and seeing as SmaTheGreek is looking for something basic… i’m pretty sure the PBRT book is to advanced.
You can find plenty of info on the internet, like my previous link. and here:
http://www.devmaster.net/articles/raytracing/
this one is a complete tutorial with code and explenation:
http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Raytracing_Topics_Techniques-Part_1_Introduction.shtml
Not really a suggestion since I do think that there are better materials out there (maybe even on the net) and because it’s quite expensive (well, that’s not very surprising if you search for such books)…but:
Hearn & Baker, Computer Graphics with OpenGL (or older versions of that book, the basics did not really change that much).
I’m currently doing a course on CG, writing a “Raytracer” (well, it’s more like Blender’s internal 3D Viewer with simple shading methods and transformations) pretty much based on that book…
Not sure if it actually covers what you’re looking for but it seems like you are just starting out and therefore it might be worth to look at the very basics explained in there.
Read a brief tutorial on how raytracing works, then go and buy Physically Based Rendering. It’s very very good, and covers everything, from start to finish, with code every step of the way. I can’t recommend it enough.
There’s a good book called “Digital Lighting and Rendering” by Jeremy Birn, It’s in a Second Edition.
I found it to be very informative, but easy for a casual user to understand. On top of being a nice source of information, well indexed and full of examples, it is also well written and enjoyable to read.
No code examples, nor is it application-specific.