Suffern, Kevin

Kevin Suffern is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), where he has been teaching since 1982. In 2003 he won an Individual Teaching Award for outstanding achievement in teaching computer graphics, in particular ray tracing. His artwork, which is produced using the ray tracer described in the book, has won two international awards, has been exhibited at SIGGRAPH, and has been presented as a SIGGRAPH sketch.

This book describes the step-by-step process of writing a ray tracer from scratch. Using numerous examples that illustrate the ray-tracing concept and processes in detail, the author presents a ray-tracer design and sample code that allows for extensibility, efficiency of the algorithms, and readability. Chapters begin with stated aims and include questions and exercises that allow the reader to apply the material presented. Special features: * Describes in detail how to write a ray tracer “from the ground up” * Hundreds of diagrams, ray-traced images, and sample code * Many of the exercises involve adding features to the ray tracer * Many questions ask readers to think about ray traced images