Partial Index to Ray Tracing News

Each article is listed just once, with title, author(s), and in some cases, my summary or comments on the article in italics. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the information in these articles. RTN articles generally have quality somewhere between that of a SIGGRAPH paper and a comp.graphics.algorithms posting. But that's a wide range!

Please let me know of errors or mis-categorizations you find here.
-Paul

Spatial Data Structures for Optimizing Ray Tracing

• Book Reviews on Hierarchical Data Structures of Hanan Samet, by A. T. Campbell, III , January 2, 1990
• Any Future for Efficiency Research? by Eric Haines , August 26, 1992
• 3D Point Hashing, by Steve Worley , January 18, 1996

• Grids (Uniform, Hierarchical, and Nonuniform)

  • Ideal Grid/Object Densities, by Dan Gehlhaar, Marc Andreessen , July 10, 1992

  • Uniform Grids

    • 3DDDA Comments, by John Spackman , March 1, 1991
      (uniform grid traversal)
    • Comparison of Ray Traversal Methods, by Erik Jansen , February 2.01, 1994
      (results on grid method)
    • Fast Raytracing via SEADS, by John Chapman and Wilfrid Lefer , February 2.01, 1994
      (grids and nested grids)

  • Non-Uniform Grids

    • NuGrid results, by Mike Gigante , July 10, 1992
      (nonuniform grids)
    • NuGrid Update, by Mike Gigante , August 26, 1992

• Adaptive Trees (Octrees, k-d, BSP)

  • Octrees

    • Response to the "teapot in a football stadium" Problem, by Andrew Glassner , March 1, 1988
      (hybrid of octree & bounding volume)
    • Linear-time Voxel Walking for Octrees, by Jim Arvo , March 26, 1988
      (nice article; see also similar ideas by Erik Jansen)
    • Octree, edited by Eric Haines , October 27, 1989
    • Octrees and Whatnot, by Steve Worley and Eric Haines , May 16, 1995
      (best way to build octree hierarchy, also about HBV)

  • Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) Trees

    • Re: Linear-time Voxel Walking for BSP, by Erik Jansen , April 6, 1988
      (good, see also Arvo's octree article above)
    • Recursive Ray Traversal, by Erik Jansen and Wim de Leeuw , July 10, 1992
      (concludes that recursive traversal of BSP data structure is faster than incremental)
    • BSP Traversal Errata, by Kelvin Sung , August 26, 1992

• Hierarchical Bounding Volumes (HBV's)

  • Bounding Volume Hierarchy, edited by Eric Haines , October 27, 1989
  • Bounding Box Intersection, edited by Eric Haines , October 27, 1989
  • BVH Traversal Results, by Nicholas Wilt , July 10, 1992
  • Bounding Volumes (Sphere vs. Box), by Tom Wilson , January 27, 1993

  • Tight Bounding Spheres

    • Minimum Bounding Sphere, continued, by Jack Ritter , June 21, 1989
      (fast algorithm to find a near-optimal sphere around n points)
    • Minimum Bounding Sphere Program, by Marshall Levine , October 13, 1989
    • Solution to Smallest Sphere Enclosing a Set of Points, by Tom Shermer , January 2, 1990
      (references to computational geometry papers that find smallest sphere)

  • Goldsmith/Salmon: Automatic Creation of Bounding Volume Hierarchies

    • Goldsmith/Salmon Hierarchy Building, by Jeff Goldsmith , March 8, 1988
    • Automatic Creation of Object Hierarchies for Ray Tracing, by Eric Haines , April 6, 1988
      (lengthy)
    • Re: Goldsmith and Eyes, by K.R.Subramanian , November 4, 1988
      (optimization for eye rays)
    • An Improvement to Goldsmith/Salmon, by Jeff Goldsmith , March 20, 1990
    • Faster Bounding Volume Hierarchies, by Brian Smits and Eric Haines , September 28, 1993
      (using randomization and multiple trials to find the best clustering, useful for both Goldsmith/Salmon and Kay/Kajiya)

  • Kay/Kajiya: Intersection of Slabs Method

    • Sorting Unnecessary on Shadow Rays for Kay/Kajiya? by Eric Haines and Mark VandeWettering , September 11, 1988
    • More Comments on Kay/Kajiya, by Jeff Goldsmith, Eric Haines , October 3, 1988
    • Question: Kay and Kajiya Slabs for Arbitrary Quadrics? by Thomas C. Palmer , January 2, 1990
    • Convex Polyhedron Intersection via Kay & Kajiya, by Eric Haines , October 1, 1990

• Other, Fancier Spatial Data Structures

  Partial list:
  • Constant Time Ray Tracing, by Tom Wilson, Eric Haines, Brian Corrie, and Masataka Ohta , August 26, 1992

• Mailboxes and Other Miscellaneous Speedups for Spatial Data Structures

  • Avoiding Re-Intersection Testing, by Eric Haines , March 20, 1990
    (mailboxes)

• Public Ray Tracing Software

  Partial list:
  • At Long Last, Rayshade v4.0 is Available for Beta-testing, by Craig Kolb , March 1, 1991

• Benchmarking Ray Tracers

  • Comparison of Kolb, Haines, and MTV Ray Tracers, Part I, by Eric Haines , January 2, 1990
    (using grids, HBV)
  • Comments on Last Issue, by Mark VandeWettering , March 20, 1990
    (MTV ray tracer switched to Goldsmith/Salmon)
  • New Version of SPD Now Available, by Eric Haines , March 1, 1991
    ("Standard Procedural Databases" for benchmarking ray tracers)
  • Ray Tracer Races, Round 2, by Eric Haines , July 1, 1993
  • An Enhanced Standard Procedural Databases Package, by Eric Haines , September 28, 1993
  • SPD Platform/Compiler Results, by David Hook , September 28, 1993

• Comparison of Spatial Data Structures and Ray Tracers

  • Poll: What efficiency schemes have you used? , August 29, 1989
  • Algorithm Order Discussion, by Masataka Ohta, Pete Shirley , October 1, 1990
    (computational complexity)
  • 5D vs. BSP and ABVH, by Nguyen Duc Cuong , January 18, 1996

Optimizing Ray Tracing, General

• Efficiency Tricks, by Eric Haines , March 26, 1988
  (little optimizations for ray tracing)
• Efficiency Schemes, edited by Eric Haines , October 27, 1989
  (similar to the previous)
• Comments on Various Ray Tracing Speedups, by Andrew Woo , July 1, 1993

• Optimizing Shadow Testing

  • A Suggestion for Speeding Up Shadow Testing Using Voxels, by Andrew Pearce , October 1, 1990
  • Shadow Testing Simplification, by Tom Wilson , March 1, 1991

Ray-Surface Intersection

• Polygons, Point-in-Polygon Testing

  • Ray/Triangle Intersection with Barycentric Coordinates, by Rod Bogart, Jeff Arenberg , November 4, 1988
  • Point in Polygon, One More Time... by Mark Vandewettering, Eric Haines, Edward John Kalenda, Richard Parent, Sam Uselton, "Zap" Andersson, and Bruce Holloway , October 1, 1990
  • Quadrant Counting Polygon In/Out Testing, by Craig Kolb, Ken McElvain , October 1, 1990
  • Point in Polygon , September 2, 1992
  • Bounding Areas for Ray/Polygon Intersection, by Steve Worley and Eric Haines , January 27, 1993
  • Simple, Fast Triangle Intersection, by Chris Green and Steve Worley , January 27, 1993
  • Simple, Fast Triangle Intersection, part II, by John Spackman , July 1, 1993
  • Point in Polygon, the Quick Answer, by Wm. Randolph Franklin and Eric Haines , February 2.01, 1994
    (short code)
  • A Storage Trick for 3D Polygons, by Eric Haines , July 6, 1994
    (save 4 or 8 bytes per vertex)

• Quadric Surfaces

  • Primitive/Box Overlap Testing by Ruud Waaj, Paul Heckbert, Andrew Glassner , March 8, 1988
    (which voxels should list a given primitive?)
  • More Comments on Tight Fitting Octrees for Quadrics, by Jeff Goldsmith , March 26, 1988
  • C Code for Intersecting Quadrics, by Prem Subrahmanyam , March 20, 1990

• Tori and Quartic Root-Finding

  • Quartic Roots and Tori , January 2, 1990
  • Correct Roots for Torus Intersection, by Haakan "Zap" Andersson, Joe Cychosz , July 10, 1992
  • Faster Ray-Torus Intersection, by Eric Haines , July 6, 1994

• Parametric Surfaces (e.g. Bicubic Patches)

  • Spline Surface Rendering, and What's Wrong with Octrees, by Eric Haines , January 15, 1988
    (how to choose octree subdivision criteria for parametric surfaces)
  • Spline Surface Intersection, edited by Eric Haines , October 27, 1989
  • Ray with Bicubic Patch Intersection Problem, Wayne Knapp, John Peterson, et al , July 13, 1990
  • Spline Patch Ray Intersection Routines, by Sean Graves , August 26, 1992

Ray Tracing, General

• Ray Transformation, by Kendall Bennett , January 27, 1993
  (generating eye rays)
• Shadows from Refractive Objects, by Steven Collins , September 28, 1993
• Shadows Through Transmitters, by Eric Haines, Greg Ward, Alexander Enzmann, Stephen Coy, and David Hook , September 28, 1993
• Distribution Ray Tracing, by Marc Levoy , July 6, 1994
  (email to Levoy's graphics class)
• Obfuscated Postscript Ray Tracer, by Takashi Hayakawa , July 1, 1993
  (this is insane!)

Soft Shadows

• True Integration of Linear/Area Lights, by Kevin Picott , January 2, 1990
• Ray Tracing Penumbral Shadows, Prem Subrahmanyam , July 13, 1990
• Soft Shadow Ideas, compiled by Derek Woolverton , August 26, 1992

Texture Mapping

• Projective Mapping Explanation, by Ken "Turk" Turkowski , October 13, 1989
• A Note on Texture Sampling, by Eric Haines , March 20, 1990
  (texture filtering)
• Getting Rid of the Divide, by Frank Compagner and Bob Pendleton , January 18, 1996

Antialiasing

• Antialiasing Issues, by Arijan Siska , October 13, 1994

Radiosity and Global Illumination

• Radiosity via Ray Tracing, by Pete Shirley , October 1, 1990
• Simple Databases Available For Rendering (Global Illumination), by Peter Shirley , July 6, 1994

Miscellaneous

• Order of Rendering and Fast Texturing, by Bruno Levy, Dan Piponi and Bernie Roehl , May 16, 1995
  (per pixel cost of Gouraud, Phong, texture mapping)