RAY(1) 1 RAY(1)
August 17, 1987
NAME
ray - a reasonbly intelligent ray tracing program
SYNOPSIS
progname [ -i inputfile ] [ -o outputfile ] [ -t ] [ -j # of samples ]
[ -f ] [ -r resolution ]
DESCRIPTION
This program is an attempt at writing a reasonably useful raytracer
for further experimentation, and for generating some generally nifty
pictures.
It reads Eric Haine's NFF file format files as input. NFF is fairly
straightforward, if you desire more explanation on the format, then
obtain his set of routines. They are available for download via
anonymous ftp from drizzle.cs.uoregon.edu (128.223.4.1) in the pub
subdirectory.
The -t flag makes the ray tracer output a period after every scanline
for those of you who get impatient, or who are wondering if it is
still working.
Use -i file to specify an NFF input file to render. If no input file
is specified, it reads from standard input.
Use -o file to specify an output file. If unspecified, the raytracer
writes its image on the file "out.pic".
Normally the raytracer performs no antialiasing. Images tend to look
choppy. A cheap but imperfect solution is to specify the -f flag,
which tells the raytracer to make the pixel value the average of the
four pixels. A more expensive but nicer way to antialias is to use
the -j #samples flag. This uses jittered sampling to determine the
value of a pixel, with a constant number of samples per pixel. A
pretty good value for the number of samples is sixteen, but the image
will take sixteen times as long to render.
The -r flag allows you to override the resolution which is specified
from within the NFF file. It is often useful when you don't want to
edit the NFF file to get a more or less detailed image than you
specified in the file.
AUTHOR
Mark VandeWettering
BUGS
Bugs! Of course there are bugs! Report them to
markv@cs.uoregon.edu....
- 1 - Formatted: October 29, 2025
