Ray Tracing from the Ground Up

Chapter 23

Triangle Meshes

Image courtesy of Tania Humphreys, Isis and Ganesh models courtesy of Cyberware

Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should:

• understand the importance of triangle meshes for modeling complex objects;
• be able to render triangle meshes using a regular grid;
• be able to read triangle-mesh data from PLY files.

Commercial modeling, rendering, and animation packages allow users to model objects using a variety of techniques. For example, complex surfaces can be modeled using NURBS or subdivision surfaces, constructive solid geometry can be used to build complex objects from simple components, and some packages also ...