Ray Tracing From Scratch in Python

In this post I will give you a glimpse of what computer graphics algorithms may look like. I will explain the ray tracing algorithm and show a simple implementation in Python. By the end of this article you’ll be able to make a program that will generate the above image, without making use of any fancy graphic library! Only NumPy. Isn’t it crazy?! Let’s dive in! P.S. This article is by no mean a complete guide / explanation of ray tracing, since this is such a vast subject, but rather an introduction for curious people :) <h1>Prerequisites</h1> We only need very basic vector geometry. <ul> <li>If you have 2 points A and B — whatever the dimensionality: 1, 2, 3, …, n — then a vector that goes from <code>A</code> to <code>B</code> can be found by computing <code>B — A</code> (element-wise);</li> <li>The length of a vector — whatever the dimensionality — can be found by computing the square root of the sum of the squared components. The length of a vector <code>v</code> is denoted <code>||v||</code>;</li> <li>A unit-vector is a vector of length 1: <code>||v|| = 1</code>;</li> <li>Given a vector, another vector that points to the same direction but with a length of 1 can be found by dividing each component of the first vector by its length — this is called normalization: <code>u = v / ||v||</code>;</li> <li>Dot product for vectors. Specifically: <code><v, v> = ||v||²</code>;</li> <li>Solving a quadratic equation;</li> <li>A bit of patience and imagination;</li> </ul> <a href="https://omaraflak.medium.com/ray-tracing-from-scratch-in-python-41670e6a96f9">Read More</a>