Soft Peaks

The effects of smoothing on ray reflections

Bachelor thesis (2023)

Authors

L.F.W. Furer Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Contributors

Ricardo Marroquim Computer Graphics and Visualisation - EEMCS (mentor)
Y. Chen Computer Graphics and Visualisation - EEMCS (mentor)
D.A.A. Pelsmaeker Programming Languages - EEMCS (graduation committee member)
Faculty
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Copyright: © 2023 Lucas Furer
More Info
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Published Date

03-06-2023

Language

English

Reuse Rights

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Faculty

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science

Abstract

The micro detail on surfaces can have a profound effect on how rays bounce of it. In ray tracing, this micro-surface is normally approximated with statistical models. We wish to figure out what the effect of normal interpolation and Phong tessellation is on how rays reflect on the surface. This has been Done by creating a ray tracers from scratch, that uses height fields, with normal interpolation and Phong tessellation. This ray tracer has then been used to render 3 different micro-surfaces, which were compared in order to understand the difference. The conclusion of this research was that both smoothing techniques had little to no effect on the reflection of rays on micro-surfaces with a high triangle density. However on micro-surfaces with a low triangle density, there was a much more pronounced difference with the smoothing techniques. A second conclusion was made which was that rougher surfaces have a more spread out distribution of rays than smoother surfaces.