Glossary Sections
Raytracing
Overview
Ray tracing is a technique for rendering 3D scenes by tracing rays from the viewer’s eye through the scene and determining what objects the rays intersect. The color of each pixel on the screen is then determined by the color of the objects that the rays intersect, as well as the properties of the objects and the lighting in the scene.
Unlike rasterization, ray tracing does not rely on a pre-defined grid of pixels to render an image. Instead, it casts rays from the viewer’s eye and determines which objects the rays intersect. This allows for more realistic and accurate rendering of complex scenes with complex lighting.
Here are some of the benefits of raytracing:
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Realistic: Raytracing can be used to render 3D scenes with a high degree of realism. This is because raytracing takes into account the properties of all of the objects in the scene, as well as the lighting in the scene.
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Accurate: Raytracing can be used to render 3D scenes with a high degree of accuracy. This is because raytracing takes into account the physical properties of light and how it interacts with objects.
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Scalable: Raytracing can be scaled to render 3D scenes of any size or complexity. This is because raytracing does not rely on a pre-defined grid of pixels.
Here are some of the drawbacks of raytracing:
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Computationally expensive: Raytracing is computationally expensive compared to rasterization. This is because raytracing has to trace a ray for each pixel on the screen.
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Not suitable for real-time: Raytracing is not suitable for real-time rendering. This is because it is too computationally expensive to trace a ray for each pixel on the screen at a high frame rate.
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Requires a lot of memory: Raytracing requires a lot of memory to store the information about the scene and the rays.
Overall, raytracing is a powerful and realistic technique for rendering 3D scenes. However, it is computationally expensive and not suitable for real-time rendering.
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