scala-ray README
================

A basic raytracer written in Scala.

Author:     Daniel Lichtenberger (daniel.lichtenberger@gmail.com)
License:    GPL3 (see GPL.txt)
Platform:   Scala 2.8

Installation
============

* Install Java and Maven 2
* $ cd scala-ray
* $ mvn package
* $ java -jar target/scala-ray-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar 
  will print the command line options.


Features
========

Done:
* Basic primitives (Planes, Spheres)
* Point and area light sources
* Textures
* Soft shadows (jittered lightsource sampling)
* Supersampling with optional edge detection (LOW quality setting)

Possible TODOs:
* A scene description language (the example scenes are hard-coded in Scala)
* BSPs for more complex scenes
* Fix embarrassing command-line handling
* Swing preview window
* Build: migrate to sbt for incremental compiles
* Performance: switch back to mutable vector math

DISCLAIMER
==========

This is really a personal education project. Don't expect anything new or useful here.
Performance is so-so, I fell back to Java-ish code for most hot loops
(which is almost everywhere except in the scene setup). Also, the JVM is
probably not the ideal platform for such a project to begin with
(no value objects, boxing, no SIMD, range checks, etc.).

Coding
======

The project follows the standard Maven project layout: the sources are in
src/main/scala, the tests under src/test/scala.

The example scenes can be found in src/main/scala/net/lichtd/ray/ExampleScenes.scala.

Some example images can be found in the pics/ folder.