A Ray Tracing Framework for Global Illumination Systems

The fundamental software components useful for a zonal ray tracing system are described. The interface protocols and some implementational observations are outlined for each of the key components. An example global illumination system assembled from the components is presented. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.3.0 [Computer Graphics]: General; I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques. Additional Key Words and Phrases: Ray tracing, radiosity, object-oriented design, zonal method, visual realism. 1 Introduction In recent years many researchers have investigated ray tracing solutions to the global illumination problem [47, 13, 12, 26, 46, 45, 1, 40, 23]. Other authors have applied objectoriented design to ray tracing programs [28, 22]. In this paper, we discuss the major components 1 of an object oriented ray tracing system for global illumination. There are several existing systems that enable programmers to construct user interfaces from basic components (e.g m..