ECS 275 Assignment #1 - A Simple Ray Tracer

Due Date: January 20, 2011

Create a model with both spheres and polygons, with at least some shiny reflective surfaces. Write a recursive ray tracer to render it in an arbitrary perspective view. Include lighting and shadows from a single point light source.

Your program should be able to read a mnemonic script file to carry out the rendering task. Furthermore, even though your ray tracer will likely be non-interactive, you are required to also provide an interactive user interface for setting up all the needed viewing and rendering parameters.

You are encouraged to implement your ray tracer based on the OptiX framework for exploiting the power of GPU. You can certainly implement everything completely in CUDA or OpenCL, but it will be much more work.

You are also required to create a web page where you will place the best images you have created for each project. Once I have collected all the URLs, I will make them available through the class web page so everybody can see your creations!