We will be implementing a simple toy ray tracer in this course.

Ray tracing is a very important 3D graphics rendering technique. We normally emulate how light works: we emulate the fresnel effect, emulate bounce lighting, emulate global illumination, and so on.

With ray tracing we "simulate" light: we follow light how it actually operates in the real world (but with a twist). As such we get a lot of effects for free:

- Colour Bleed

- Bloom

- Ambient Occlusion

- Realistic Shadows

- Shadow Fallout

- Diffuse Materials

All of these would take a lot of code to emulate but as you will see in this course, these can be implemented very easily using ray tracing.

In this course we will be doing the following:

1) Implement a triangle primitive (you can use this to render OBJ meshes as a challenge)

2) Implement sphere primitive

3) Implement area lights

4) Implement direct lighting for diffuse materials

5) Implement indirect lighting for diffuse materials

6) Render a variation of the famous Cornell Box scene

If you love making things from scratch, you will love this course. In a little over an hour, you will make your own ray tracer from scratch. This course is oriented towards beginners and so should be easily picked up by anybody.