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1 - Introduction

1.1 Getting Started
1.2 A Simple Example

This document describes rayshade in enough detail to enable the technical-minded to sit down and render some images. In its current form, it is truly a draft, and even then more of a reference manual than a proper user's guide.

This document does not provide any kind of thorough introduction to the basics of computer graphics or ray tracing. There are many other excellent sources for this kind of information. The technical and coding details of rayshade and its libraries will be documented elsewhere.

1.1 Getting Started

The best way to learn how to use rayshade is to dive right in and start making pictures. Study the example input files that are packaged with rayshade. Run them through rayshade to see what the images they produce look like. Change the input files; move the camera, change the field of view, modify surface properties, and see what differences your changes make, all the while referring to the appropriate portions of this document. Browse through the individual chapters to see what rayshade can and cannot do. The rayshade quick reference guide may also help you sort out syntactical nasties.

Throughout this text, the typewriter type style is used to indicate keywords and other items that should be passed directly rayshade. Where appropriate, items in an italic style indicate places where you should provide an appropriate number or string.

Vectors, which consist of three numerical values, are indicated by an arrow after a name written in italic type style, e.g., vector». Items enclosed between [ and ] characters indicate that specifying those items is optional. Complex constructions that are described elsewhere in the text, such as surface or object specification, are denoted by enclosing descriptive text between < and > characters.

1.2 A Simple Example

Because rayshade provides a default camera description, surface properties, and a default light source, it is easy to construct short input files that allow you to experiment with objects, textures, and transformations. If you haven't already run rayshade on one of the example input files, you might want to try producing an image using the following input:

    sphere 2 0 0 0
If you are running rayshade on a UNIX¹-like machine, the command:

    echo "sphere 2 0 0 0" | rayshade > sphere.rle
should produce an image of a sphere.

Footnotes
1 UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.
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