🔔 Before you start 🔔

This project is part of the 42 computer programming schools common-core curriculum. 42 is a non-profit educational organization characterized by its peer-to-peer and project-based learning method. You'll find a subject of the project in the repository.

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🎨📒 miniRT

Table of Contents

• 🛫 Intro
• ✨ Characteristics
• 🛠️ Tools used
• 🚀 Quick guide
• 🎨 Bonus
• 📖 Training report
• 🏆 Acquired skills
• 🔧 Future improvement and/or next steps
• 🤝 Acknowledgements
• 📚 References

🛫 Intro

Ray tracing is a technique to compute a description of a scene to render a 3D-looking image. Using several principles of linear algebra and trigonometry, this method recreates the lighting of that scene, making it look like a realistic(ish) object.

It gets its name from the concept of a ray, a tuple of a point in space and a vector, which represents the origin of a light ray and its orientation. Creating the algorithms that compute the way that a light ray bounces on objects and reaches the camera is the core of the idea, but depending on the preferences of the user different parameters may be used to recreate even more characteristics for the perception of the image.

✨ Characteristics

• As for us, we have chosen to use the Phong reflection model, which lets the developer change values like diffuse, ambient, brightness, shininess and specular.

• The cylinders that are generated do not have lids. This aspect is left undefined in the subject, so it is really up to the developer's choice.

• Images will always have a ≈16/9 resolution.

• The code follows the 42 Norm standard in accordance with the 42 evaluation criteria.

• This program has been tested on Linux and macOS.

🛠️ Tools used

The MiniLibX is a tiny graphics library that allows you to do the most basic things for rendering something on screens without any knowledge of X-Window and Cocoa.

The headers used for the rest of the functions are:

Header File	Functions
math.h	sqrt, pow, tan
stdlib.h	free, malloc, exit
unistd.h	close, read, write
stdio.h	printf, perror
fcntl.h	open
string.h	strerror

🚀 Quick guide

The first thing you must do is clone the repository, but remember to run it with the --recursive-submodules flag to download the MiniLibX content. Or run git submodule update --init after cloning.

When running make, any errors that might arise could probably be due to the lack of the libraries needed for the MiniLibX. I have never used CMake before and don't fully understand this tool yet, so I can't provide solutions regarding this builder.

Once you manage to get the executable, you can choose one scene from the scenes folder and run its path as the only parameter. Excluding memory errors, the program should open a window with the image.

🎨 Bonus

• The light has the additional parameter color.
• The objects have specular lighting, following the Phon reflection model.

📖 Training report

This project has been a real journey—I even had to restart it and rethink my approach halfway through. On the other hand, I ended up enjoying proving to myself that I was capable of such a complex (for me at this moment) project.

The orientation of the elements (camera as well as the objects), has been one of the biggest challenges. Depending on the way the program is implemented, the orientation is computed in some way or another and it may affect the final result if the rest of the code is not coherent with this part. In fact, the problem with the cylinders' rotation was the reason the project had to be remade.

🏆 Acquired skills

• Apart from the obvious C, I improved even more my skills in make and git.
• I expanded my knowledge of the use of a graphics library.
• I learned fairly complex mathematical operations, which really opened my mind.
• I improved my researching abilities during the crisis since we had to reach out for help to improve our documentation and get to understand the problems that kept bugging us.

🔧 Future improvement and/or next steps

✅ To-do list

• Arreglar que puedan faltar luz, cámara y ambient
• Comparar bien los fpn con epsilon
• Argumento de los vectores de dirección revisar requisitos
• Arreglar las sombras dentro de los objetos
• Revisar el parseo, criterios de los parámetros.
• Parece que la cámara al final no se orienta bien
• For the time being, only ambient can be set from the executable arguments.
  • Other things to be able to change on execution time could be the resolution of the image.
• There could be a submodule for the libft. I can do this as soon as I finish Libft-prime.
• The part where the objects are created and the parsing is done are intertwined. It would be good praxis if it was divided.

🤝 Acknowledgements

This is a shared project! Working with my partner MarkelUribe has been a truly enriching experience.

📚 References

Type	Title	Link
YouTube Video	Linear algebra	Watch here
YouTube Video	Tutorial	Watch here
YouTube Video	Vectors	Watch here
Book	Ray Tracing in One Weekend	Read here
Book	The Ray Tracing Challenge	Read here
Web Page	scratchpixel	Visit here

🎉 Thanks!

Don't hesitate to contact me. You have the info in my profile