Research and Analysis of Ray Tracing Methods

Abstract

In computer graphics, the study of how to build realistic scenes on the computer has been the focus of research. The dominant approach to simulating the correct light source was to use rasterization, but rasterization does not correctly simulate multiple reflections. To make virtual scenes more realistic, ray tracing was proposed to provide better results. With the rapid development of computer hardware, the use of ray tracing for rendering animation or games is becoming more and more common, and many scenes can now be rendered with ray tracing instead of rasterization for better results. This paper introduces and analyses the various methods of ray tracing in chronological order, starting with the original forward ray tracing and backward ray tracing, followed by Whitted algorithms with recursion, and then a series of methods introducing rendering formulas. And then, a few rays tracing algorithms introducing the Metropolis sampling method is mentioned. One can conclude that this method is going to be used for future optimization and development. It is significant for the development of ray tracing.