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How to draw pixels for ray-tracing in C++?

I'm currently trying to learn ray-tracing in C++. I am getting help from two books: one is Ray Tracing from the Ground Up by Kevin Suffern, and the other one is Physically Based Rendering by Matt Pharr. These two books are great for learning basics and, later, advanced stuff.

I could create some basic shapes using user interface of Suffern's book. However when I tried to write all code on my own, things have gone wild. I realized that I don't even know how to open a window and fill pixels on that. Do you have any good resource to recommend that could teach me the basics of drawing in C++.

Solution

  • You could generate image files instead of drawing to windows. The PPM format is the simplest one to generate. Browsers usually can display PPM. Safari does.

    If you want to generate PNG files use libpng.