Foreword
Computer graphics involves simulating the distribution of light in a 3D environment. There are only a few fundamentally different algorithms that have survived the test of time. They can be loosely classified into projective algorithms and image-space algorithms. The former class projects each geometric primitive onto the image plane, with local shading taking care of the appearance of objects. This class of algorithm is still widely used because it is amen able to pipeline processing and therefore to hardware implementation as evidenced by all modern graphics cards.
Image-space algorithms compute the color of each pixel by figuring out where the light came from for that pixel. Here, the basic operation is to determine the nearest object ...
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