Research and Papers
All-Frequency Shadows, Amorphous Phenomena Simulation, Andrew Winter's Volume Graphics Publications, Animation and Rendering of Complex Water Surfaces, Bidirectional Estimators for Light Transport, Carlos Urea Almagro's papers, Computer Graphics Research Group, Katholieke Unive, Efficient and Realistic Hair Modeling and Animatio, Efficient Image-Based Methods for Rendering Soft S, Eliminating Popping Artifacts in Sheet Buffer-Base
ACM Crossroads: Ray Tracing
Article on Ray Tracing in the student magazine of the ACM.
Bagisas
A GUI the YAFRAY raytracer writen in Python. Downloads, screenshots, and FAQ. Available for Linux and Windows.
Brassman's Modeller And Animation Links
Links to modelling and animation utilities, many for POV-ray on Windows and Unix.
Chuck's Ray Tracing Software
Personal page with links to programs for modeling, Ray tracing, converting, and animating. Plus models for various ray tracers. Windows, MacOS and Unix.
CoolRay
Open Source Raytracer with a scene description language that provides constructs for programming like loops and functions. Its written in C++ and runs on Windows and Linux/Unix.
FAQ for realtime raytracing
The FAQ about speed optimization for raytracing for use in realtime raytracing.
Flamingo
Plug-in for Rhino, uses both raytracing and radiosity to create single-frame images and animations. Product description, gallery, training, evaluation download, and purchasing. For Windows.
FuzzyPhoton - The Raytracing Repository
Information about raytracing in general, with a how-to section and an A-Z reference. Technical articles and a gallery of images renderd with the VRWorld4 raytracer developed by the author, and humour.
GRT Raytracer
Raytracing system written in Common Lisp. It trys to become good classical raytracer: reasonably efficient, with a good selection of primitives, advanced texturing capabilities, animation support, and probably integration of the scripting environment with some GUI tools.
Internet Raytracing Competition
Regular awards for best raytraced still images and animations submitted by the public. Site includes most recent winners, voting on the current round, and the topic and rules for submitting to the next round.
Introduction to Ray Tracing
The introduce of ray tracing. Also known as ray casting, determines the visibility of surfaces by tracing imaginary rays of light from the viewer's eye to the objects in the scene.
Java Ray Tracer
Java ray tracing engine distributed under the GNU Public License. Images, screenshots, download, and feature list.
Java Ray Tracer
Java ray tracing engine distributed under the GNU General Public License. Images, screenshots, download, and feature list.
Kray
Freeware raytracer with subsurface scattering, global illumination and many other features. Product details, downloads, gallery, and tutorial using the software.
Laurens Lapre's Webpages
Home of the Lparser, the program reads a Lsystem description and processes it into a 3d form which can then be outputted in several formats, including VRML, DXF and POV.
Light in C++
A C++ class library available as source code implementing a physically correct renderer. Working on Unix and Windows.
Lightflow Rendering Interface
An object oriented library with API in C++ and Python for synthetic rendering, which provides a common environment and description language to treat light distribution in three dimensional spaces. Available for Linux and Windows.
Radiance
A raytracer trying to aid lighting designers and architects by predicting the light levels and appearance of a space prior to construction. It uses a hybrid approach of Monte Carlo and deterministic ray tracing. Available for Unix.
Ray tracing in Wikipedia
A overview non technical article on ray tracing also covering some history of the subject.
Ray Tracing Introduction from SIGGRAPH
A basic introduction to building a ray tracer, with some pointers to more advanced subjects at the end.
Ray Tracing News Guide
Lots of information on ray tracing. Updated once or twice a year.
RayChase
Fast raytracer that will render random images and display them on the desktop. Tested on KDE, Gnome, WindowMaker, and Enlightenment. One can also write the output to an image file (to interactively updating web pages for example). Versions exist for FreeBSD and Linux.
Rayshade
An extensible system for creating ray-traced images. It is written in C, yacc, and lex, and runs on Unix, AmigaOS, OS/2, DOS and Older MacOS.
RayTraccio
A Java ray-tracer running as a applet that wants to be simple and clean but nonetheless has some advanced features.
Raytracing-FAQ
Home of the comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing-faq with a online version.
Raytressi
Ray tracing library written in c++ with python bindings. Source code, documentation, galleries, tutorials available. Binaries for Windows, seems to be portable to Unix platforms.
Realistic Image Synthesis Engine
R.I.S.E. is an open source global illumination renderer for producing physically and biologically based photo realistic images. Product specifications, gallery, documentation, and downloads. [Windows, Linux, SunOS, Irix 6.5, Sun Solaris]
Realstorm
A realtime raytracing engine with downloadable benchmark, screenshots and information. Windows 95/98/me/2000.
Realtime Raytracing Maillist
Discuss programming techniques, algorithms and productions related to realtime raytracing, both software or hardware based.
Renderpark
Test bed system for physically based photo-realistic image synthesis, mostly radiosity based. Unix based.
Tachyon Parallel / Multiprocessor Ray Tracing Syst
A ray tracer distributed as C source, supporting almost every Unix version, Windows NT and Mac OSX.
The DRay Ray Tracer.
A ray tracer supporting multithreaded rendering, global illumination with photon mapping & final gather, and tone mapping. Limited source code available.
The Rearview Rendering Engine
A game engine aiming towards three dimensional computer graphics which fits both human perception and the shape of the real world better than common polygon engines do. Linux.
The Recursive Ray Tracing Algorithm
Explains how the basic ray tracing algorithm with reflection, transparency and shadows works.
vlib
An open source volume modeling and rendering library for unix. The interface facilitates the majority of significant developments in the field to date.
VRay
Advanced raytracing system, supports subsurface scattering, all the standard 3D Studio MAX materials, environments and atmospheres filters. Demo version for download.
YafRay: Yet Another Free RAYtracer
A free raytracing program. News, information, forum and downloads for Windows, MacOSX and Linux.
YASRT Raytracer
A simple raytracer in development, it supports the basic features of a raytracer along with multi-threading. Many platforms are supported (Win32, Linux, and iPAQ).