Selected Key Developments in Rendering

As discussed the past couple weeks in class, we’re moving through the decades, continuing on from the 1970s and into the 1980s and 1990s where key developments in ray-tracing and other techniques were devised. Read these papers discussed in class. These are just a few of the major ideas that have led to modern implementations of global-illumination renderers.

• 1980 Whitted: An Improved Illumination Model for Shaded Display
• 1981 Cook and Torrance: A Reflectance Model for Computer Graphics
• 1984 Cook, Porter, and Carpenter: Distributed Ray Tracing
• 1984 Goral, Torrance, Greenberg, and Battaile: Radiosity
• 1986 Kajiya: The Rendering Equation

I will also re-link this paper, as some of the ideas will continue to relate to some of the upcoming class discussions.

• 2007 Walter, Marschner, Li, and Torrance: Microfacet Models for Refraction