[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Ray traced environments

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

On 3/22/07, Mike Rozak <Mike at mxac.com.au> wrote:
> 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.

You are correct.  Most of the clever effects you see in Pixar stuff is
a result of stochastic sampling.  Expensive, but not as expensive as
general ray tracing.

The system is called REYES.  Wikipedia has a pretty decent article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyes_rendering

It was also laid out in a  series of SIGGRAPH papers in the 80s.

This is a great case of viewing with preconceptions. "I believe only
ray tracing gives the best photo realistic results, therefor if what I
am looking at is photo-realistic it must be raytraced."

It isnt.  Your base postulate was incorrect and your reasoning circular.