A Literate Raytracer

Literate ray tracer is a simple implementation of raytracing in JavaScript in the literate programming style. It aims to fuse the mathematical explanation of the algorithm with an actual implementation, shunning any undocumented or unexplained corners.

Ideally after reading it, you not only have some idea how it works, but also have some creative thoughts about new things that could be built with the same concepts.

Ray tracing is a beautifully simple way to draw 3D scenes from the ground up, using just math. Unlike WebGL, you can write the whole thing in any simple language, like JavaScript or Python.

Ray tracing isn’t great for realtime graphics, but I think it’s incredibly effective for learning, and a great basis for creative rendering techniques.

Unfortunately it’s not easy to learn ray tracing, and for mostly silly reasons. There’s a near-total lack of commented, explained, simple ray tracers to learn from. Prior work skews either to barely-finished homework assignments or intimidating industrial-strength research projects.

It will need more work to be totally straightforward: writing code in this fashion, so that it works in a linear explanation and there are no undocumented mysteries, is a significant challenge and I’ve done it in parallel to actually learning the concepts. If you can help clarify the implementation, or point out potential stumbling blocks, head over to the open source project.,