hii
Photorealistic Path Tracer
41–50 of 98 posts
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#42Well I hoped to be on HN today for my high-effort blog post on generics and metaprogramming ( http://thume.ca/2019/07/14/a-tour-of-metaprogramming-models-... ) but at least I'm on HN for something :P Edit: And at least right before I go to bed my post technically made it on the front page in the very last slot :) I'm also glad people like my ray tracer, it was super satisfying to build, and nice to have a project tha…
You're in the very first slot now. Congrats, this is super impressive, both in implementation and documentation.
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Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#43Fun story about the OP: We brought Tristan on as a high school intern at Shopify. I heard about how fantastic he was off and on during his internship (I’m founder and CEO).
So when I heard that he was giving a town hall talk at the end of his stint I definitely wanted to check it out.
What I walked into was a 30 minute take down of Liquid, the template language that I wrote. He systemically took every single design decision I made and dismembered it based on language design fundamentals.
That was still one of my favorite townhalls. As a self taught programmer it also send me to read about compiler and language theory for the next years to better understand all the errors of my ways. Thanks Tristan!
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#44This is cool. I want to start learning this. What programming language would you suggest to write my code while I learn this? Is C++ pretty much necessary for performance reasons or other languages would be okay too? Any specific recommendation?
Check out Peter Shirley's book series, starting with Ray Tracing in One Weekend . It's about ray tracing, not path tracing, but it's a fun introduction to the broader topic. As for languages, I guess that depends on how long you are willing to wait for results. You might be able to use Go or something on the JVM without driving yourself insane.
His books are all about path tracing, which is a subset of ray tracing.
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#45I recognized the final project structure of CS488. Great class, though quite time-consuming. The author links to past year galleries: https://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs488/gallery-A5.html I'm not sure if this was done in all the years, but one of the interesting (and slightly unfair) aspects of the final project was that you were not only graded on the quality of the final render, but also how closely you aligne…
That seems like quite the wrong incentive for learning. A lot of ambitious plans fail. To be graded only on the final delivery gives adequate incentive to execute. I perhaps get the education signal that executing successfully on a plan is a worthwhile skill, but isn't learning also experimenting?
You're graded only in part by aligning with the proposal. You're also graded on innovation, technical depth and software design. The TAs compare it to figure skating / high diving -- you should be able to say what you can do, and then nail it.
In my experience, the students who take the project courses at UW are ambitious and driven. I suspect the chief effect of this policy is an ambitious project whose plan has been fleshed out by a healthy back-and-forth with the TAs upfront, vs a ridiculously ambitious project that hasn't been fleshed out.
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#46Fun story about the OP: We brought Tristan on as a high school intern at Shopify. I heard about how fantastic he was off and on during his internship (I’m founder and CEO). So when I heard that he was giving a town hall talk at the end of his stint I definitely wanted to check it out. What I walked into was a 30 minute take down of Liquid, the template language that I wrote. He systemically took every single design d…
Hah, that's great. This is the kind of humility that keeps me coming back to hN.
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#47I feel a bit old now :) Really appreciate the ethics of citing sources, explaining in much detail and presenting choices from first principles.
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#48Fun story about the OP: We brought Tristan on as a high school intern at Shopify. I heard about how fantastic he was off and on during his internship (I’m founder and CEO). So when I heard that he was giving a town hall talk at the end of his stint I definitely wanted to check it out. What I walked into was a 30 minute take down of Liquid, the template language that I wrote. He systemically took every single design d…
Can you share the critique? It would be an interesting read.
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#49Nice work and presentation, always fun with ray tracing. Bonus points for the fractal :) I assume you did this in RGB space, so no pretty prisms? I couldn't find any explicit mention. From the report I guess you didn't implement refraction at all? Spectral leads to great images, but the color space conversions are such a pain to get correct.
Also makes it a lot slower. For a really nice/readable (but therefore also “naive” and slow) spectral one, look at this one: https://github.com/TomCrypto/Lambda
It’s a lot easier to learn from than the pbrt one in my opinion.
There are ways to avoid having to do single wavelength rays (hero wavelengths or basis functions) but it’s tricky.
Re: Photorealistic Path Tracer
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hah you’re obviously capable. Some big firm will scoop you up no problem.
Truly capable people rarely want to be “scooped up by some big firm”, much less “no problem”.
I meant someone with the op’s skills will have companies vying for and paying handsomely for