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Excellent Book for Beginners and Advanced Readers

January 10, 2011

“Ray Tracing from the Ground Up” is an excellent book for beginners and advanced readers. You can tell that the author has spent many years working on the subject and has written ray tracers himself.

The book benefits from the author’s extensive knowledge. There is something to discover everywhere, such as in the many exercises. As a result, you will get a lot of use out of this book for a long time.

Knowledge of C programming (possibly Java) and mathematics, especially linear algebra, is required.

Why only 4 out of 5 stars?

  1. The code is unfinished in places. This also applies to the download on the book’s website. The further you get into the book, the more unfinished or sketchy the code becomes.
  2. C is used instead of utilizing object-oriented programming.
  3. The code is not easily parallelizable in some places. This is no longer up-to-date in the multi-core era.

The book:

  • Kevin Suffern
  • Ray Tracing from the Ground Up
  • Taylor & Francis
  • 2007

See also the review on Amazon

categorySoftware Engineering