Greetings weary travellers and welcome to Szumski.net 2.0. I've decided it is time to put this lonely
web-site to use, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify the steep hosting fees for what
amounts to a glorified floppy-disk for homework transfers. As such, I will be endeavoring to breathe
new life into Szumski.Net over the next few weeks, beginning with a short exposition on the "Art
of Computer Science." If that fails to entertain, you can always look forward to next week's display
entitled, 'Turkeys and You,' which promises to be at least as exciting as watching the grass grow.
One of the more unfortunate aspects of Computer Science is that it is often very difficult to share
one's interest and passion for computers with individuals who are not themselves programmers.
Fortunately, there is at least one area of Computer Science in which even the most green-thumbed
Biologist can take an interest, and that is the art of Computer Graphics.
Computer Graphics, for those with no prior understanding of the field, is more than simply painting
pretty pictures on a computer. The images you see below are the visual realization of some fairly
complex mathematical procedures, and their success is as much dependant on the artist's knack for
calculus as for their aesthetic ability. This should serve as suitable explanation for why our
images appear neither realistic, nor aesthetically pleasing :).
Before we get to the images, a brief explanation about how they were constructed. These images
were put together using a ray-tracer designed by James Szumski and Tsu-Kang Peng over the course
of a single 24 hour period. Ray-tracers are engines which model geometric shapes in a three
dimensional space by tracing straight lines from the 'eye' to the objects in the scene, and bouncing
these lines off the object towards the scene's light sources to determine what colour the object
should appear to the user. This process of 'bouncing' rays off of objects makes it a simple task
to add features like reflections, refractions, and shadows, some of which are evident in our images.
But enough discussion, on to the images!
This image I put together myself using the ray tracer, and it is designed to show off the reflections
and shadows produced by our tracer...
The second image shows off some of the shading and shadowing capabilities of the tracer, and was
put together by Mr. Peng.
The last image was also put together by Mr. Peng, and shows off some of the specular and reflective
capabilities of the tracer.
That's all for this week. Check in next week for 'Turkey Madness' :).
If you are looking for the old homepage, it can be found here.