Dennis' Portfolio

This project explores ray tracing in OpenGL by implementing a recursive ray tracer with Phong shading, shadows, reflections, and texture mapping. The goal is to render realistic lighting and materials using GPU-based ray tracing.

Ray tracing simulates how light interacts with objects in a scene. Instead of rasterizing triangles, we trace rays from the camera into the scene, checking for intersections with objects and computing lighting based on material properties.

1. Ray-Object Intersections

The shader implements ray-plane and ray-sphere intersection tests to determine where each ray hits an object.

• Planes use a simple dot product check.

• Spheres solve a quadratic equation to find intersections.

2. Phong Shading

Once a ray intersects an object, we calculate its Phong reflection model, which includes:

• Ambient lighting (constant background light)

• Diffuse lighting (light reflecting based on angle)

• Specular highlights (shininess of the surface)

3. Shadows

To check if a point is in shadow, we trace a shadow ray from the hit point toward the light source.

• If an object blocks this ray, the point is in shadow.

• If the ray reaches the light, it is lit.

4. Texture Mapping

Textures are applied based on the object’s UV coordinates.

• The ground plane uses a marble texture.

• The spheres use colorful texture mapping based on their spherical coordinates.

5. Recursive Reflections

To achieve mirror-like reflections, we recursively trace reflected rays.

• At each bounce, the ray’s intensity is multiplied by the surface’s reflectivity coefficient (kr).

• The recursion depth is set to 50, allowing multiple reflections.

6. Temporal Anti-Aliasing

To smooth out jagged edges and reduce noise, Temporal AA blends the current frame with previous frames.

This project serves as a foundation for GPU-based ray tracing, combining physically-based rendering techniques with OpenGL shaders for real-time visuals.