Computergrafik III: Raytracer

As part of the course Computer Graphics III, I worked in a team in 2004 to develop a ray tracer implemented in Java. The objective of the project was to implement core concepts of physically based image synthesis and apply them in a fully functional, self-contained rendering engine.

The ray tracer supported basic geometric primitives such as planes, boxes, spheres, and cylinders, as well as recursive ray tracing with reflection and transmission. Lighting was implemented using point lights, spotlights, and directional light sources, combined with Phong and Blinn shading models. Additional features included textural and procedural mapping, freely movable cameras, and 4× and 9× anti-aliasing.

Scenes were defined, imported, and rendered using a custom XML-based scene description format. The project provided in-depth insight into rendering pipelines, geometric computation, and the structured implementation of complex algorithms in software.