- Change: Markdeep library URL updated to new location
- Fix: Correct parameter name typo for
bvh_node
constructor parametersrc_objects
- Fix: Added
fmin
to book text forcos_theta
ofrefract
(#732) - Fix: Standardized naming for ray-t and time parameters (#746)
- Fix:
random_unit_vector()
was incorrect (#697) - Fix: Synchronize text and copies of
hittable.h
- Fix: Synchronize copies of
hittable_list.h
,material.h
,sphere.h
- Change: refactor
sphere::hit()
method to reuse common blocks of code. - Change: Improved the explanation and calculation of sphere UV coordinates (#533)
- Fix: Catch cases where
lambertian::scatter()
yields degenerate scatter rays (#619) - Fix: Syntax error in listing 58 (Dielectric material class with reflection) (#768)
- Fix: Correct wording for ray traversal text (#766)
- Change: Wrote brief explanation waving away negative t values in initial normal sphere
- Fix: Catch cases where
lambertian::scatter()
yields degenerate scatter rays (#619)
- Fix: Missing
override
keyword forxz_rect::pdf_value()
andxz_rect::random()
methods (#748) - Fix: Synchronize book and source for
cornell_box()
function. - Fix: Introduction of light code was introduced out of sequence (#738, #740)
- Fix:
ray_color()
was creating a new light for every ray bounce (#759)
- Change: Refactored dielectric class for clarity
- Fix: Update local Markdeep library (for offline reading) to v1.11. The prior version had incorrect content (#712)
- Fix: Image texture destructor should call
STBI_FREE
instead of delete (#734)
- Delete: Remove premature
cstdlib
include; not needed until we userand()
(#687) - Fix: Replace old anti-alias result image with before-and-after image (#679)
- Fix: Listing 29: Added missing
rtweekend.h
include (#691) - Fix: Undefined
vup
variable in camera definition (#686) - Fix: Listing 51: Add missing
hittable.h
,rtweekend.h
includes (#693) - Fix: Listing 59: ["Full glass material"] Diverged from source
- Fix: Fix error in citation section (#721)
- Fix: Listings 33, 39: Add consistent function signature for
trilinear_interp
(#722)
- Change:
bvh_node
no longer reorders the source vector of scene objects; uses local copy instead (#701) - Delete: Remove unused u,v,w variables in initial
perlin::noise()
function (#684) - Fix: Listing 5: Neglected to add ray time for metal and dielectric materials (#133)
- Fix: Listing 15: In
bvh.h
, add missinghittable_list.h
include (#690) - Fix: Listing 33, 34, 38: Change implicit casts to explicit ones (#692)
- Fix: Listing 40: Change
perlin.h
in the caption totexture.h
(#698) - Fix: Listing 70: Add missing
bvh.h
(#694) - Fix: Listing 70 and
main.cc
: Change a fuzz value of a metal sphere to 1.0 which is the maximum value (#694) - Fix: Fix error in citation section (#721)
- Fix: Fix errors in citation section (#721)
- Fix: Area equation in section 3.3 Constructing a PDF and nearby text (#735)
- Add: Listing 36: Add missing updates to dielectric class for updating specular in scatter record
We're still chasing that elusive stable project state where we're mostly done with large changes, yet we keep finding more and more to tweak and improve. Besides the usual batch of corrections and small improvements, for this change we plodded through the complete code progression for both books one and two (In One Weekend and The Next Week). This caught a lot of issues (to our dismay), and allowed us to generate a complete set of new render images for both books, to catch up with all of the changes we've been making. The end result is that readers should find a significantly better agreement between the book and their code as they progress, and their renders should also generally match.
Besides the new rendered images, we also much improved the image parameters, which were frequently missing from the previous version, leaving readers to guess at their values, or go to the code to try to figure out how we created some of the images. In general, our working renders are now 400 pixels wide, usually 16:9 aspect ratio. We now use an explicit aspect ratio and deduce the image height and other camera values, so you can tweak your render size just by changing the image width (instead of updating a bunch of dependent parameters).
One interesting late change we made was adding explicit C++ override
labels to subclass methods.
We did this mostly to aid code readers, but were surprised to find that it actually caught a pretty
significant bug hiding in our code (see entry in common changes below).
You'll also see a new citation section at the end of the books, to encourage uniform citations out in the world, making it easier for people to refer to and track these books.
As is typical, though we roughly follow semantic versioning, we're considering this release a minor change instead of a major one. It's a common reflex, because people generally have a (misguided) aversion to bumping the major version a lot. We consider it minor because most of the changes are quite local, some classes get new constructors and any variances should be quite simple and easy to fix up. Still, one might consider this more properly a major version bump.
For our next larger-than-patch release, we're beginning a large revisit of book 3, Ray Tracing: The Rest of Your Life. There's a lot of work to do, and this will likely be a significant change and improvement. We're hoping that changes to books one and two will be small, but that's never worked out for us before. Ah, dreams.
- Delete: vestigial
vec3::write_color()
method (now in color.h) - Change: All images and figures renamed to follow more logical convention, using the following
pattern:
{fig,img}-<book>.<sequence>-<title>.<filetype>
(#495) - Change:
main()
function gets organized into image, world, camera, and render chunks - Change: Added header guards to the text of all three books whenever a new header file was introduced, consistent with source code (#645)
- New: Added constructors that take
color
arguments in addition to the constructors takingshared_ptr<texture>
arguments, simplifying calling code. Applies tochecker_texture
,constant_medium
,diffuse_light
,lambertian
, andisotropic
(#516, #644) - Change: Added
override
keywords throughout. This keyword marks a subclass method as one that is intended to override a superclass method. It makes the code a bit easier to understand, and ensures that your function is actually overriding the method you think it is. Which is good, because it already caught an existing bug in The Rest of Your Life source. This change includes commenting out the book 3isotropic::scatter()
method, which was accidentally ignored anyway. (#639, #669) - Fix: Found a bug in book 3 source
isotropic::scatter()
method. Commented out, using default (as it was previously). (#669) - New: each book gets a section of recommended citation examples (#500)
- Change: Updated all rendered images except for 1.13, 1.14 (#179, #547, #548, #549, #550, #551, #552, #553, #554, #555, #556, #557, #560, #561, #562, #563, #564, #565, #566)
- Change: Standard working render width changed to 400 pixels
- Change: Image 6 is now a before-and-after pair to illustrate antialiasing
- Change: Listing 48: Refactored material and geometry declarations
- Change: Listing 52: Refactored assignment of
etai_over_etat
- Change: Listing 56: Refactored material declarations
- Change: Listing 61: Refactored material and geometry declarations
- Fix: Corrected various missed change highlights in code listings
- Fix: Listing 7: Added missing
color.h
,vec3.h
includes - Fix: Listing 18: Add missing
double t
member of structhit_record
(#428) - Fix: Listing 24: Add missing
color.h
include - Fix: Listing 30: Add missing
camera.h
include - Fix: Listing 42: Don't need to include
ray.h
when usingrtweekend.h
- Fix: Listing 48: Add missing
material.h
include - Fix: Listing 51:
refract()
function was missingfabs()
onsqrt()
argument (#559) - Fix: Listing 61: Include updated
cam
declaration, show context w/highlighting - Fix: Listing 62: Highlight rename of
camera::get_ray()
parameters to s, t (#616) - Fix: Listing 63: Show reverted scene declarations
- Fix: Listing 68: Show final scene render parameters with highlighting
- Fix: Rewrote refracted ray perpendicular and parallel components for correctness (#526)
- New: Listing 50: Show the updated material definitions
- Delete: Deleted the section covering the old
flip_face
class, renumbered images as this eliminated the rendering with missing Cornell box faces (#270, #482, #661) - Delete: scenes 7 & 9 from the original (
cornell_balls
andcornell_final
), as these were not covered in the book. Made the source and book consistent with each other. There are now a total of eight scenes for the second book (#653, #620) - Change: Listing 10: Separate out world & camera definitions in main (#646)
- Change: Updated most rendered images for book 2: 2.01-2.03, 2.07-2.13, 2.15-2.22.
- Change: Scenes get custom image parameters (#650)
- Fix: Reduced code duplication in
dielectric::scatter()
function - Fix: "Intance" typo in Chapter 8.1 to "Instance" (#629)
- Fix: Listing 7: Show reverted viewing parameters from book 1 final scene
- Fix: Typo in listing caption for filename
moving-sphere.h
- Change: use
vup
for camera, as in other two books - Fix: world and camera setup in
main()
, and include full body in book listing (#646) - New:
flip_face
moved to book 3, where it's needed for the light source (#661)
- Fix: Correct typo: "Intance Translation" -> "Instance Translation"
- Fix: Corrected geometry type when computing distance between two points, final scene (#609)
- Fix: Missing closing parenthesis in listing 10 (#603)
- Fix: Tiny improvements to the lambertian::scatter() development (#604)
- Fix: Correct geometry type and unit vector method in
ray_color()
, listing 20 (#606) - Fix: Listing 26: alternate
random_double()
switcheddistribution
,generator
(#621) - Fix: Listing 28, 30:
light_shape
should have default material, not0
(#607) - Fix: Listing 30:
mixture_pdf
needsshared_ptr
arguments (#608)
- Fix: Refactoring the camera code in v3.1.0 missed updating the viewport to match, resulting in distorted renders (#536)
- Change: Camera code improvements to make it more robust when any particular value changes. Also, the code develops in a smoother series of iterations as the book progresses. (#536)
- Fix: Camera initialization with explicit up vector (#537)
- Fix: Changed some text around the camera model and the camera defocus blur model (#536)
- Change: The C++
<random>
version ofrandom_double()
no longer depends on<functional>
header. - Change: Refactored
random_scene()
. More named intermediate values, sync'ed with source. (#489)
- Fix: Added clarification about updating lambertian variables from
color
tosolid_color
. - Fix: Corrected for-loop indices (they differed from the version in book 1) in
random_scene()
. - Fix: Introduce "Texture Coordinates for Spheres" in Chapter 4 to support (u,v) coordinates in
hit_record
(#496) - Fix: Small correction: we now use
std::sort
instead ofqsort
(#490) - Change: Refactored
random_scene()
. More named intermediate values, sync'ed with version in In One Weekend and with source. Added highlight for update from last version in book 1. (#489) - Change: The C++
<random>
version ofrandom_double()
no longer depends on<functional>
header
This minor upgrade adds some fixes and changes that are a bit more than just patches. The text now
has subchapter headings to help readers browse content and get a bit more context. We're introducing
new type aliases point3
and color
for vec3
to better indicate the underlying mathematical
types of parameters and variables. Overall, a bunch of small improvements that we'd recommend
adopting, but may warrant comparison with any current projects.
- Fix: Include cmath in vec3.h (#501)
- Fix: Scattered improvements to the text
- New: Subchapters throughout all three books (#267)
- New: Add explanation for padding
aarect
in the zero dimension (#488) - Change: Minor change to use new
point3
andcolor
type aliases forvec3
(#422) - Change: Renamed
constant_texture
tosolid_color
, add RGB constructor (#452) - Change: Moved
vec3::write_color()
method to utility function incolor.h
header (#502) - Change: Switch from
ffmin
/ffmax
to standardfmin
/fmax
(#444, #491) - Change: Math notation to bold uppercase points, bold lowercase no-barb vectors (#412)
- Change: Books use Markdeep's image class=pixel for rendered image fidelity (#498)
- Fix: Improve image size and aspect ratio calculation to make size changes easier
- Fix: Added
t
parameter back intohit_record
at correct place - Fix: image basic vectors off by one
- Fix: Update image and size for first PPM image
- Fix: Update image and size for blue-to-white gradient image
- Fix: Update image and size for simple red sphere render
- Fix: Update image and size for sphere with normal-vector coloring
- Fix: Correct typo in "What's next?" list to rejoin split paragraph on "Lights." Adjust numbering in rest of list.
- Change: Define image aspect ratio up front, then image height from that and the image width
- Change: Default image sizes changed from 200x100 to 384x216
- Change: First image size changed to 256x256
- Change: Large rewrite of the
image_texture
class. Now handles image loading too. (#434)
- Fix: code styling for source code both inline and in fenced blocks (#430)
- Change: Every book source now includes from a single common acknowledgments document
- Fix: Correct typo: "consine" to "cosine"
- Fix:
shared_ptr
dereference and simplify code inhittable_list::bounding_box()
(#435) - Fix: Erroneous en-dash in code block. Replace
–>
with->
(#439) - Fix: Introduce
u
,v
surface coordinates tohit_record
(#441) - Fix: Add highlight to new
hittable::bounding_box()
method (#442)
- Fix: unitialized variable in first version of
integrate_x_sq.cc
- Fix: remove unreferenced variables in several sample programs
- Fix: correct program computation of the integral of x^2 (#438)
- Fix: Display rendered images as pixelated instead of smoothed (#179)
- Delete: delete old README files specific to each book (#410)
- Fix: Remove duplicated text and reword on the camera up vector (#420)
With the migration to a web format accomplished in v2.0.0, we immediately began work on a new major release: v3.0.0. This release tackles the following key themes:
-
Establishing a common build system for the three projects. We chose CMake for its broad support for multiple platforms, as well as multiple build tools and IDEs. This change includes a reorganization of the project source files, and unifying a lot of code across projects.
-
A major upgrade of the project source code, addressing a number of large changes that we had deferred for later.
-
A number of larger changes to the book content, refining some approaches and ideas, and addressing some areas in the text that needed improvement.
Following this release, we expect to switch to a much more incremental approach, mostly with patch-level (fix) changes and some minor-level (addition) changes.
- Change: Default floating-point type changed from
float
todouble
(#150) - Change: Materials are now referenced with
std::shared_ptr
pointers - Change: Complete elimination of bare pointers and
new
/delete
- Change:
hittable_list
usesstd::vector
plusstd::shared_ptr
pointers - Change: Header cleanup across the source code (#218, #220)
- Change: Cleaned up standard C++ header use (#19)
- Change: Improved random number generator utilities
- Change: Replace MAXFLOAT with (portable) infinity (#195, #216)
- Change: A lot of code cleanup, refactoring, renaming (#192)
- Change: Disable compile warnings for external
stb_image.h
on Windows - Change: Replace pi with portable version (#207)
- Change:
ray_color()
function now has max depth passed in, rather than hard-coding it (#143) - Change: Added
random_in_unit_sphere()
,random_unit_vector()
,random_in_hemisphere()
to vec3.h. Fixed places where we were using one but should have been using another. (#145) - Change: General rework of the
vec3
header (#153, #156, #215) - Change: Clarify sphere intersection code, plus slight perf improvement (#113)
- Change:
ray::point_at_parameter()
renamed toray::at()
- Change: Moved
ffmin()
,ffmax()
fromaabb.h
tortweekend.h
- Change: Move low-level utility functions to more appropriate headers
- Change:
squared_length()
renamed tolength_squared()
- Change: Update
sphere::hit()
function. - Change: Refraction variables renamed to match reflection variable names
- Change: Simplify lambertian scatter direction calculation
- New: CMake configuration & build
- New: Added progress output for main programs (#139)
- New:
src/common
directory for code shared across books - New: Common project-wide header:
src/common/rtweekend.h
- New: File constants.h with portable math constants (#151)
- New:
vec3::write_color
- provides a robust output method for color data (#93) - New:
degrees_to_radians()
utility function (#217) - New:
random_int()
,random_double()
, andvec3::random()
utility functions - New: Added safety value when surface texture has null data
- New: Main programs now define and handle parameterized background color
- Fix: Diffuse PDF computation uses random point on sphere, rather than inside
- Fix: Improve color [0,1] -> [0,255] mapping
- Change: Code in source and in book reformatted to a consistent 96-column line length (#219)
- Change: Lots more highlighting of changed code in books to aid reading
- Change: Math typesetting fixes throughout the books (#13)
- Change: Books now use Markdeep's chapter indirection syntax
- Change: Updated several output images to match code updates
- Change: Books general styling improvements (#197)
- Change: Refactored acknowledgements. These are now moved to and duplicated in each book
- New: Added code listing captions, including source file name, for all books (#238)
- New: Added captions to all figures (#238)
- New: Local copy of
markdeep.min.js
for offline reading - Fix: Fixed various minor problems in the text
- Change: Reworked Lambertian reflection text (#155)
- Change: Revised the figure for computing a random reflection vector (#142)
- New: Clarified text around the ideal Lambertian distribution (#155)
- New: Additional explanatory text to the dielectric chapter
- New: Image for hemispherical rendering
- New: Image for dealing with front and back faces (#326)
- Fix: Update
ray_color()
code blocks to match current source (#391)
- Change: Added proper handling of front vs back face intersection (#270)
- New: "The Next Week" main program added swtich statement for different scenes
- New: "The Next Week" main program now defines all image/camera parameters for each scene
- Fix: Fixed bug in
noise_texture::value()
(#396) - Fix: Correct first Perlin noise() function in "The Next Week".
- Fix: Fix OCR error in
texture::value()
function (#399) - Fix: Remove premature declaration of
moving_sphere::bounding_box()
(#405)
- Change: Improved naming of auxilliary programs in The Rest of Your Life source
- Fix: Delete unused variable
p
in main() (#317) - Delete: Several unused source files from
src/TheRestOfYourLife
This major release marks an overhaul of the entire series, moving from a primarily PDF format to a web accessible format using Markdeep (https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/). This represents a huge overhaul to the contents, particularly around source code blocks in the text, mathematical typesetting and source-code cleanup.
- Change: Moved existing InOneWeekend, TheNextWeek, TheRestOfYourLife content to io repo
- Change: Rewrote vec3.h
cross
function for clarity - New: General release to web
- New: Created single monolithic raytracing.github.io repo
- New: License change to CC0 in COPYING.txt
- New: CHANGELOG.md
- New: CONTRIBUTING.md
- New: COPYING.txt
- New: README.md
- New: raytracing.github.io links to all the three books
- New: CSS for all books
- New: CSS for the print variant of the books
- Fix: All instances of
hitable
have becomehittable
- Fix: Replaced
drand48()
with portablerandom_double
number generation - Delete: Deprecated existing InOneWeekend, TheNextWeek, TheRestOfYourLife repos
- Change: README files updated for top level, source, and books
- Change: Text, Chapter 0 Overview has become Chapter 1, all subsequent chapters incremented
- Change: Text, Syntax highlighting of source modifications
- Change: Text, Chapter 3, Reorder include files in code blocks to match src conventions
- Change: Text, Chapter 3, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 3, Reordered
vec3
class functions to + - * / - Change: Text, Chapter 4, Reorder include files in code blocks to match src conventions
- Change: Text, Chapter 6, Reorder include files in code blocks to match src conventions
- Change: Text, Chapter 6, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 7, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 9, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 9, Put function signatures and
{
on the same line - Change: Text, Chapter 10, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 10, Put function signatures and
{
on the same line - Change: Text, Chapter 11, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 13, Put function signatures and
{
on the same line - New: Markdeep page created for entire body of text
- New: Markdeep MathJax for formulae and equations for body of text
- New: raytracing.github.io/books/RayTracingInOneWeekend.html
- Fix: Text, Chapter 7, Add
#include "random.h"
in code blocks - Fix: Text, Chapter 10, Added metal fuzziness parameter for initial dielectric
- Fix: Text, Chapter 13, Added metal fuzziness parameter
- Fix: Code, Removed extraneous
;
fromvec3::&operator[]
signature - Delete: Code,
vec3 p = r.point_at_parameter(2.0);
in main.cc
- Change: Text, Chapter 0 Overview has become Chapter 1, all subsequent chapters incremented
- Change: Text, Syntax highlighting of source modifications
- Change: Text, Chapter 2, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 3, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 4, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 5, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 5, added "texture" to "We can use that texture on some spheres"
- Change: Text, Chapter 7, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 7, "This is yz and xz" changed to "This is xz and yz"
- Change: Text, Chapter 8, Changed "And the changes to Cornell is" to "... Cornell are"
- Change: Text, Chapter 9, Changed short
if
statements to two lines for Consistency - Change: Text, Chapter 10, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Code and Text, Chapter 9, cleaned up implementation of
constant_medium::hit
- Change: Code and Text, Chapter 9, Rewrote debug functionality in
constant_medium::hit
- New: raytracing.github.io/books/RayTracingTheNextWeek.html
- New: README.md, source README.md
- New: Markdeep page created for entire body of text
- New: Markdeep MathJax created for formulae and equations for body of text
- New: Earth map picture for use in rendering
- Fix: Text, Chapter 2, The
lambertian
class definition now usesvec3
instead oftexture
- Fix: Text, Chapter 7, Changed
cornell_box
hittable array size to 5 - Fix: Code and Text, Chapter 3, Changed
List[0]
toList[i]
inhittable_list::bounding_box()
- Fix: Code and Text, Chapter 3, Replaced
fmax
andfmin
withffmax
andffmin
- Fix: Code, Add missing headers to
constant_medium.h
to fix g++ compiler error
- Change: Text, Chapter 0 Overview has become Chapter 1, all subsequent chapters incremented
- Change: Text, Syntax highlighting of source modifications
- Change: Text, Chapter 2, Reorder include files in code blocks to match src conventions
- Change: Text, Chapter 3, Reorder include files in code blocks to match src conventions
- Change: Text, Chapter 6, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 6, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- Change: Text, Chapter 8, Changed calculation of
a
axis to pseudocode - Change: Text, Chapter 8, Consistent use of spaces in code blocks
- New: raytracing.github.io/books/RayTracingTheRestOfYourLife.html
- New: README.md, source README.md
- New: Markdeep page created for entire body of text
- New: Markdeep MathJax created for formulae and equations for body of text
- Fix: Text, Chapter order starting from chapter 2
- Fix: Text, Renamed figures and images to match new chapter numbering
- Fix: Text, Chapter 4, Rewrote formula for "Color" to "Color = A * color(direction"
- Fix: Code and Text, Chapter 6,
material::scattering_pdf
now returns type float - Fix: Code and Text, Chapter 6, removal of factor of 2 to
random_cosine_direction
calculation
- New: First GitHub release of Ray Tracing: The Rest of Your Life.
- New: First GitHub release of Ray Tracing in One Weekend.
- New: First GitHub release of Ray Tracing: The Next Week.