Wednesday, March 29, 2023

What is Ray Tracing?

 

Ray tracing is a rendering technique used in computer graphics to simulate the behavior of light in a 3D environment. It works by tracing the path of individual rays of light as they travel from the camera through the virtual scene, interacting with objects and surfaces along the way until they reach a light source or are absorbed.


In the ray tracing process, each pixel in the image is traced back to the light source, allowing for accurate calculation of lighting, shadows, reflections, and other visual effects. This results in highly realistic and detailed images with accurate lighting and shadows, making ray tracing a popular technique in fields such as architecture, product design, and visual effects.


Ray tracing can be computationally expensive, as it requires a significant amount of processing power to accurately simulate the behavior of light in a 3D environment. However, with the advancements in hardware, such as the use of dedicated hardware such as NVIDIA RTX GPUs and AMD's RDNA2, and software optimization, ray tracing has become more widely available for real-time applications in video games, virtual and augmented reality, and other interactive applications.