Assignment #4 -- Ray Tracing and Shading

Due Date

This assignment is due at 11:59pm on Thursday, April 15th. Projects turned in late will lose points as described in the policies handout. This assignment should be done alone or in pairs. You may share ideas with other groups, but you may not share code.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

You may submit on either Unix or Windows. The platform you submit on will be the one used to grade assignments.

Do not touch any file after the submission date. Readers will check the file time stamps. Regardless of which platform you used for the assignment, you should have an as4 directory in both of your Unix and Windows accounts. You should put a README file into both of these directories that at the minimum contains the following data:

Your (and your partner's) name,
The platform your code runs on,
The location of your source code (i.e. indicate who in your group has done the submission, Windows or Unix). So only one of you in your group needs to submit the code, but everyone has to create as4 directory that contains the README file.

You should also e-mail your README file to cs184@imail.eecs.berkeley.edu. On the subject line you should specify your account names and the assignment number (e.g: cs184-aa, cs184-ab: as3).

All files needed to compile your code should appear in the Windows or Unix directory of the user indicated in your README file. It is your responsibility to make sure that they will compile and run properly. You will also need to set the permissions properly. You will also turn in some images. These should be names "image-nn.xxx" where nn is a number (e.g. 01, 02, 03...) and xxx is an appropriate extension (e.g. tif, jpg, ppm, etc.) The main input files needed to render those images should be named "input-nn". Finally there should be a "notes-nn" file for each input stating: the command line used to produce image-nn, how long it took to run, what features are demonstrated by the image, any other comments you'd like to add about the image.

Windows: The grader should be able to recompile your program by simply opening the project and rebuilding it from scratch.

Unix: Remember that the grader should be able to recompile your program simply by typing make.

Do not wait until the last minute to start this assignment. Even a minor bug in a ray tracer typically produces a black image with no other clue about what is wrong... that makes them very hard to debug. If you don't give yourself enough time, you will be most unhappy.

Overview

For this assignment, you will write a ray tracer that can at least:

Render ellipsoids
Render polygons
Use simple Phong Shading (in color)
Compute shadows
Compute reflections
Use point and directional lights
Use some reasonable method for accelerating ray tests
Write its output to a standard image format such as jpg, ppm, png, or tif.

Optional features that you can implement for extra credit are:

Transparency with refraction
Anti-aliasing
Lens effects / depth of field
Super quadrics
Programmable shading
Texture, bump, and/or displacement mapping
Spot lights and/or area lights
Other interesting features

You will use your program to render 5 or more example scenes that demonstrate the features you have implemented. You will turn in the images rendered by your code, the code, and some documentation (see above). Your images must demonstrate the features you implemented or you cannot get points for those features. You will also receive points for the aesthetics and creativity demonstrated by your images.

Grave Warning: It will be considered cheating to turn in image that were not generated by your code. Cheating on an assignment will earn a zero for the assignment and possibly subject you to disciplinary action.

File Formats

The input file can be in any format you like. You are responsible for coming up with something reasonable and creating inputs for interesting images. An input may consist of multiple files. Your output needs to be in a standard image format that most image viewers can read. Suggested formats are: JPEG, TIFF, PNG or PPM. Do not use an indexed color format. You can write your own code to write the files or you can use a standard library. PPM is very easy to write, but offers no compression. JPEG, TIFF, and PNG are supported by many standard libraries. (libTIFF, libPNG, ImageMagik, nd many others) You are responsible for figuring out how to use these libraries. Your images should be at least 640x480 and no more than 1024x1024.

Comment

This assignment is purposefully open ended. I am continually impressed by what Berkeley undergrads can do when given a bit of freedom, so here it is. You are encouraged to be creative and enjoy this assignment.

Questions should be posted to the news group