WebGL Ray Tracing Example

Created by Gregory Conrad

Description

A relatively simple ray tracer built with WebGL that showcases several different scenes.

At a high level, this ray tracer supports:

• Animation
• Singular light source (using Phong model)
• Variable number of reflections
• Several types of objects (currently planes and spheres)

Refractions and other world object types could be added fairly easily, but that is outside the scope of this simple demo.

Note: This project is a largely modified version of the starter code supplied in CS 543 at WPI. It was almost completely rewritten but some basic concepts still remain in this final product.

Project Structure

• index.html - the main HTML file that contains both shaders
• main.js - the main JS file
• lib/ - JS libraries used for WebGL setup and usability
  • initShaders.js - grabs shaders from HTML and compiles them
  • MV.js - contains many convenience methods for handling vectors & matrices in JS
  • webgl-utils.js - contains utility methods, including a setup method for WebGL