Thanks for the quick replies! Sadly its not ray casting or ray tracing. Ray Marching sounds close to what I was looking for. Although the wiki entry said it was a slow technique, and, as I understand it, it can be done in real time. Ill look more into the ray marching thing. Thanks again! ~Ryan On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Robert Nesius <nesius at gmail.com> wrote: > Perhaps he really is looking for Ray Casting (in the context of surfaces, > versus volumes) if he's looking for an alternative to Ray Tracing. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_casting > > Excerpt: > Ray casting is not a synonym for ray tracing, but can be thought of as an > abridged, and significantly faster, version of the ray tracing algorithm. > Both are image order algorithms used in computer graphics to render three > dimensional scenes to two dimensional screens by following rays of light > from the eye of the observer to a light source. Ray casting does not compute > the new direction a ray of light might take after intersecting a surface on > its way from the eye to the source of light. This eliminates the possibility > of accurately rendering reflections, refractions, or the natural falloff of > shadows; however all of these elements can be faked to a degree, by creative > use of texture maps or other methods. The high speed of calculation made ray > casting a handy rendering method in early real-time 3D video games. > > > -Rob > > > On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 3:17 AM, Chris Barber <chris at cb1inc.com> wrote: >> >> Do you mean ray marching? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_ray_casting >> >> >> On 1/31/10 11:53 PM, Ryan Hanson wrote: >> >> To the people who went to the penguins unbound thingy on Saturday. >> I'm trying to figure out the other alternative to Ray Tracing that used >> stepping. >> >> I tried searching for Ray Stepping but I didn't find anything. >> >> Any help? >> >> Thanks >> >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >> > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > >