Hello!

A long time ago, I tried my hand at raytracing. What does this mean? I could explain it, or I could let this blurb from Wikipedia do it for me.

In computer graphics, ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an image plane. The technique is capable of producing a very high degree of photorealism; usually higher than that of typical scanline rendering methods, but at a greater computational cost. This makes ray tracing best suited for applications where the image can be rendered slowly ahead of time, such as in still images and film and television special effects, and more poorly suited for real-time applications like computer games where speed is critical. Ray tracing is capable of simulating a wide variety of optical effects, such as reflection and refraction, scattering, and chromatic aberration.

Simple, right? I've dabbled in it here and there over the past several years, and now it looks like I'm back into it again. This time around, I'm using an excellent free 3D modeller and renderer called Blender. I'm also using the excellent Blender tutorial by Neal Hirsig that is available here. This is the result of my "homework" project at the end of learning unit 1. It is to make an animated submarine based on the cover art from The Beatles' Yellow Submarine.




Here is my video. Note that I decided to store it on YouTube instead of hosting the QuickTime file myself. This is because lately I've been disappointed by the bandwidth speed from my web hosting provider. It used to be blazingly fast, but now they offer unlimited storage and bandwidth for an amazing price and I guess had to dial back the speed accordingly. But I digress. Here is my video.



Stay tuned for the next one!