Ray Tracing from the Ground Up
by Kevin Suffern · first published 2007
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Builds a working ray tracer in C++ while explaining the underlying theory and math in depth, including depth of field and global illumination; suits programmers who want to learn the mechanics by implementing them.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Well, there is the book "Ray Tracing from the Ground Up" [1], which although a bit outdated (stemming from 2007), gives in-depth discussions on many of the topics. The author discusses possible pitfalls on the way as well. There are a few chapters, which are…
on “Ray Tracing Essentials, Part 1: Basics of Ray Tracing” ↗Ray Tracing from the Ground Up, by Kevin Suffern As a college freshman I started this book with only a passing familiarity to C++ and was able to follow it to implement a raytracer that supported depth of field and global illumination,…
on “Ask HN: Your favourite tutorial for total beginners?” ↗If you want a deep-dive into the mathematics as well, I really liked Ray Tracing from the Ground Up by Kevin Suffern [1]. The book focuses on the theory and mathematics of ray tracing, and uses C++ to build a ray tracer. The code however is simple and explained really well so you could adapt it to the…
on “Ask HN: Resources for Learning Graphics Programming” ↗…video format is not for you, I would at least follow the contents, then look up the individual pieces. The black book has a number of them: https://www.jagregory.com/abrash-black-book/ For ray tracing, Ray Tracing from the Ground Up: https://www.amazon.in/Ray-Tracing-Ground-Kevin-Suffern/dp/15... Then people will jump in to say that the PBRT book (https://www.pbrt.org/) is a better or more comprehensive source, and it is true, but…
on “I still teach OpenGL ES 3.0” ↗I quite enjoyed Ray Tracing from the Ground Up when I was learning ray tracing for the first time. http://www.raytracegroundup.com/
on “An Introduction to Ray Tracing (1989)” ↗I agree with OP and find the literal programming in that book incredibly distracting and annoying. I prefer the theory up front and the code later. "Ray Tracing From the Ground Up" does a much better job in my opinion (although it also only covers a fraction of the topics in the PBR book.)
on “Physically based rendering from first principles” ↗