Ready, Set…Render!
For some people, everything is a contest-even “ray tracing,” which renders a scene in realistic 3-D by computer modeling of light rays as they bounce around in the virtual world. For the last few years, computer graphics craftspeople have been submitting their work to the Internet Ray Tracing Competition. A panel of judges picks the winners and displays them on this site, which has become an archive of amazing images and animations.
Each contest has a theme, such as “history,”“nature,”“night,”or “great engineering achievements.” The winning entry for one recent topic-imaginary worlds”-depicted,in Dali-esque style,a string quartet having a picnic; the cello and viola snooze parent-like against a tree with a musical score open like a paperback book,while two violins frolic nearby.Another recent winner (theme:”history”) showed the familiar image of the Hindenburg exploding, with the flames and sparks eerily reflected from the surface of the doomed German dirigible.
Visitors to the site can not only view the images but also read brief descriptions by their creators of the tools and techniques they employed.These passages give a glimpse of the dedication, pride and frustration of the artists.Descriptions include how long the computer cranked away to render the image.Times range from a few hours to more than a day-this is not a pursuit for those seeking instant gratification.Though only judges selected by the IRTC administrators have voting privileges, anyone can look at, and comment on, the pictures. Prizes are modest (mainly software from sponsoring companies). Contestants compete for the praise of their peers, in the process building a showcase of graphics achievement.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it
Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.
New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.
GPT-4 is bigger and better than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t say why
We got a first look at the much-anticipated big new language model from OpenAI. But this time how it works is even more deeply under wraps.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.