THE DESIGN OF A REALISTIC

This book contains the documented source code for a ray tracing rendering system. It is written using a programming methodology called literate programming that intermingles text describing the system and the principles behind it with the source code that implements it. We believe that the approach of both explaining theory while simultaneously showing an implementation is a valuable way to teach ideas in computer science; not only does the implementation help clarify how an algorithm is implemented in practice, but by showing ideas in the context of a complete and non-trivial software system we are also albe to address issues in the design and implementation of medium-sized rendering systems. Often, one doesn’t fully understand an algorithm until one has implemented it; seeing someone else’s implementation is almost as good.