Ray Tracing Essentials Part 2: Rasterization versus Ray Tracing

In Part 2: Basics of Ray Tracing, NVIDIA’s Eric Haines runs through the basics of rasterization and ray tracing. For decades, rasterization, also known as the Z-buffer, has been the method of choice for rendering 3D images at interactive rates. This talk contrasts and compares it with ray tracing, showing how the operations have a certain symmetry. More details about this video can be found here: You can watch the all of the videos in the series on this YouTube Playlist: Ray tracing resources page: Ray Tracing Gems: Additional links: Quote at the start of the video is from “A Characterization of Ten Hidden-Surface Algorithms,” on page 53, Appendix B The rasterization and ray tracing table near the end of this video is by Chris Wyman, used in Peter Shirley’s Overview of Ray Tracing talk