Return to Ray Tracing Assignment Overview
 

Wow.  Finally a project that took longer to render the images and build this web page than it did to code.  Now that's my kind of project.

No more "jaggies"!  Up until now, all the images produced by my ray tracer have been created by taking only one sample per pixel.  Since pixels are arranged on a square grid, this undoubtedly creates stairstep-like artifacts on diagonals, curves, and areas with subtle detail.

Here, I've zoomed in on my scene from the glass and mirrors assignment and illustrate the difference between the original way to render the image (one center of pixel sample per pixel) and 1, 4, 16, and 64 jittered samples per pixel.  Look closely at subtle detail and diagonal lines.
 

Original Sampling: One Center of Pixel Sample per Pixel
400x400 JPEG converted from 400x400 PPM output
0.36 minutes
 

1 Jittered Sample per Pixel
400x400 JPEG converted from 400x400 PPM output
0.35 minutes
 

4 Jittered Samples per Pixel
400x400 JPEG converted from 500x500 PPM output
1.42 minutes
 

16 Jittered Samples per Pixel
400x400 JPEG converted from 400x400 PPM output
5.55 minutes
 

64 Jittered Samples per Pixel
400x400 JPEG converted from 400x400 PPM output
22.17 minutes
 

All images were rendered at 400x400 pixels.  Executable compiled with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Professional and run on a Dell desktop with an Intel Pentium 4 1.8 GHz processor with 1.0GB of RDRAM running Microsoft Windows XP.