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RAY TRACING

Computer Graphics

Ray Tracing is, among others, a fundamental principle to generate synthetic images. The process simulates the interaction of rays, emitted from light sources, with the objects in a scene. Ray Tracing permits photorealism, however, the basic algorithm serves as well in other disciplines, for instance, in applications that simulate the propagation of electromagnetic waves.

Ray Tracing has high computational costs. The determining factors are the number of objects in the scene, their extension, the number of rays to be traced, and the effects to be simulated. A lot of investigation is undertaken around the world to speed-up the ray tracing algorithm. Certain groups report almost interactive ray tracers (with certain limitations).

The principal objective of the research in our group is the introduction of new ideas to accelerate the ray tracing algorithm and to incorporate the algorithm in real applications. Also, ray tracing can be applied in other fields, for instance, as a valuable tool in the process of predicting the strength of the electromagnetic field in wireless telecommunication systems.

 

  • Curved Surfaces

    Ray tracing of curved surfaces which are based on meshes of triangles. The triangles define through the view-dependent intersection algorithm curved surfaces.

     

    • set of images (stored as .jpg) as contained in the article published in Computer Graphics Forum:

       

      Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 left Figure 8 right Figure 9 left Figure 9 right Figure 10 left Figure 10 right Figure 11 left Figure 11 right Figure 12 left Figure 12 right Figure 13 Figure 14 left Figure 14 right Figure 15 left Figure 15 right Figure 18 Figure 19 left Figure 19 right Figure 21 left Figure 21 right

    • Small animation [2.1MB] which shows an object modeled with 976 patches including reflexions in a mirror and reflexions of other objects on the curved object. The smooth silhouettes are easy to observe.

    • The same animated object [2.1MB] but modeled with simple triangles. The silhouettes appear as polylines.

    • Small animation [2.3MB] which shows a cylinder modeled with 16 patches including reflexions on the ground plane and shadows due to several light sources. It can be observed that the patches can be joined either smoothly or defining a sharp edge (tap of the cylinder).

     

  • Coherent Ray Tracing

  • Softshadow generation

  • Acceleration technique for distributed (stochastic) ray tracing to include penumbra.

  •  Application for the simulation of the propagation of electromagnatic waves

  • Space subdivision


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