Re:Black Book of Graphics Programming, Special Edition (1997)
by dahart on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @10:54AM
(#14901243)
For a gentle intro to Ray tracing that is specifically geared for beginners, and lays a simple foundation for physically based rendering, I'll recommend Pete Shirley's mini-book Ray Tracing in One Weekend. http://in1weekend.blogspot.com/2016/01/ray-tracing-in-one-we...
Re:Black Book of Graphics Programming, Special Edition (1997)
by banachtarski on Thursday August 03, 2017 @04:47AM
(#14917964)
Not to be pedantic but "ray tracer" evokes a concept that is a fair bit narrower than a "path tracer." The latter has concepts of sampling multiple directions and attempts to do things like conserve energy, respect the statistical properties of the surfaces it interacts with etc. A perfect ray tracer is easy to write but untenable for most real-world usage so PBRT is written more to the tune of all the various things you can do to improve performance without introducing statistical bias.
Re:Black Book of Graphics Programming, Special Edition (1997)
by fellellor on Tuesday August 01, 2017 @11:05AM
(#14901398)
What would you recommend as prerequisites for PBR?
Re:Black Book of Graphics Programming, Special Edition (1997)
by banachtarski on Thursday August 03, 2017 @01:02AM
(#14917064)
All that's "really" required is patience and some mathematical maturity. It is a complete book for the most part, but if you already are familiar with concepts like sampling theory, calculus, and concepts like convolutions and signal processing you'll be better off.
http://www.pbrt.org/
It is an absolute beast of a book, and not for beginners. Nor is it written as such; After Ch. 1 the book acts less like a sequential book, and more like an extensive reference guide for anything you'd need to really understand what goes on in a Ray Tracer.
As for "A trip down the Graphics Pipeline", I found it fairly easily:
https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/a-trip-through-the-...