- Here is a link to a more in-depth definition of the ray tracer file format.
- The number we call shininess is from Inventor, and should be multiplied by 128 to get the n in equation 16.55.
- Sadly, we don't have a complete port of our infrastructure to the Windows environment. Happily, there is an SGI in the lab. There is an SGI program called composer (/cse/courses/cse557/bin/composer) that will let you interactively assemble scenes composed of boxes (constructed from triangles), spheres, and imported models. Composer also allows you to select viewing parameters, define directional or point light sources, and specify reflectance properties for each object in the scene.
Composer works with inventor files as its native format. It can export to the format used by our ray tracer. It cannot read this format so remember to save your files in Inventor format as well as exporting them if you want to further modify them.
- There is another program in the course binaries directory called plytoray which will convert ply files to some text suitable for insertion into a ray file. This isn't so useful, because you have to make up a camera etc. It was useful to me, though, so there it is. In /cse/courses/cse557/plys there are some ply files to use with aforementioned useless program.
- In /cse/courses/cse557/ivs I hope to put some interesting Inventor files ASAP.