[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Ray traced environments

[Mike Rozak]

Tess Snider wrote:
> Look at this scene from Toy Story, using raytracing (and probably some
> material shaders):
> http://media.outnow.ch/Movies/Images/1995/ToyStory/dvd-film.ws/16.jpg

I think I attended a graphics talk by a Pixar employee about toy story... to 
the best of my knowledge, Toy Story DIDN'T use ray tracing. The scene you 
show can be done with ordinary rasterization; the reflections on the table 
are done the same way that MMORPGs do their water reflections.

Ray tracing wasn't used in the movied until later; I think that Ice Age 1 
had a tiny bit of ray tracing. Something like Robots probobably had a lot 
because of all the curved shiny surfaces. Most modern movies AVOID ray 
tracing, and have renderers that do 90% of the rendering with scanline, and 
the 10% shiny/lensy bits are done with ray tracing.

However, in some ways ray tracing is more applicable to computer games, 
particularly amateur ones. Ray tracing just "gets it right" first try, 
without any human involvement. Scan line rendering needs an expert to get it 
to do effects like reflective water, nice shadows, forests, etc. properly. 
Thus, ray tracing is better for amateur 3D than scan-line.