Ray Tracing from the Ground Up

Chapter 29

Texture Mapping

Image courtesy of Adeel Khan

Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should:

• appreciate how textures add interest to images;
• understand some simple texture-mapping techniques;
• have added textured materials to your ray tracer.

29.1 Introduction

Although the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is overused, it’s quite appropriate here, and in fact, I’m going to start with two pictures. Figure 29.1 shows a scene rendered without using any textures, not even a checker pattern. Although there’s some interesting geometry here, it’s a fairly bland image. In contrast, Figure 29.2 is the same scene rendered ...