Ray-Tracing for Realistic Scenes

Ray-tracing is a powerful method that has been used for decades to create realistic images by trying to simulate how light bounces around a scene.

Here is a 1980s-era example of a ray traced scene created on a home computer.

https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/7/2/a/600_459974122.jpeg

Tariq's talk will focus on gently introducing the basic concepts and algorithm for ray-tracing, but also give a taste of more sophisticated methods used in modern rendering:

• the core idea - following rays and their reflections

• some of the simple algorithms and maths

• simple Python code to demonstrate the core idea

• a short discussion of some additional methods - reflections, haze, texture

• free open source tools you can use yourself to create raytraced scenes - e.g. povray (http://www.povray.org), blender

• a taste of modern approaches to rendering realistic scenes, such as radiosity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosity_(computer_graphics))

Here is a modern rendering of an image generated by more sophisticated simulation of light, sourced from more incredible examples here (http://gizmodo.com/9-of-the-most-photorealistic-renderings-on-the-web-823379988). Really, this scene is not a photo, it is generated entirely algorithmically!

https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/7/4/4/600_459974148.jpeg

The talk will start at 7pm, you can arrive from 6.30pm.

Please also sign up on the skills-matter page: https://skillsmatter.com/meetups/9476-ray-tracing-for-photorealistic-scenes .