Tim's Architecture Proposal

Preliminary Class Hierarchy

Utility Classes

• Vector3 - Describes a 3D vector.
• Matrix4 - Describes a 4x4 matrix. Useful for transformations (translation, projection, rotation, etc...)
• Color - Describes a color. We write our own class to better control precision.
• ImageChunk - A rectangular chunk of pixels.

Raytracer Core

• Camera - Describes a camera with a location, direction, field of view, exposure, etc...
• World (interface) - Describes a way to organize a scene in memory. Contains a method for intersecting a ray with the world.
  • SimpleWorld - The world is arranged as just a list of objects.
• Light (interface) - Describes a light source. Has methods for calculating shading based on an incident ray.
  • OmniLight - A light source represented by a point. Omnidirectional.
• Ray - Describes a ray with a starting point and a direction. Can also store information such as intersected color, shading, etc...
• Primitive (interface) - Describes a geometric primitive. Includes a method to intersect a ray.
  • SpherePrimitive - Self-explanatory
  • PlanePrimitive - Self-explanatory

Application-related

• GlobalTraceSettings - Holds settings necessary for rendering a scene. Eg: max recursion depth, anti-aliasing, image size.
• TraceClient - The ray tracing client.