Charles Moidel

cmoidel@wpi.edu

CS 563

4/15/2003

Project Proposal

I’d like to implement a spectral ray tracer to render bubble interference and then possibly adapt it to run in real-time through an API such as Microsoft Direct 3D. I think I can use the ray tracer as a pre-process step to generate a data set that can be used as a lookup in D3D.

Most of this work has been done before. I plan to implement the project in the following phases:

1. A simple ray tracer to render a sphere.

2. A method/algorithm for converting spectral information to RGB.

3. A spectral ray tracer to render a sphere at multiple wavelengths.

4. A spectral ray tracer to render thin film interference on a sphere.

5. A tool to generate data sets (possibly in the form of textures) from the spectral ray tracer.

6. A D3D application that renders a sphere polygon mesh using the generated data sets to determine the color at each pixel.

I’m sure that phases 1 to 4 have been done before. I am not sure if phases 5 and 6 have been done before. I have seen a real-time application that renders bubbles, but I’m pretty sure that the effect was simulated and not based on real spectral information.

I do not plan to use any existing source at this time. As deliverables, I hope to generate one application that ray traces bubbles and one application that renders bubbles in real-time.

However, it is very possible that I will not be able to complete this entire project before the end of the semester.