Usually I use this blog to share updates, such a newly published papers, etc …. but this time, I’m actually – kind-of – calling for some “community help”: In particular, I’m curious if there’s any graphics people out there that knows how to use a modelling program (I don’t; not if my life depended on it :-/), and that would be able to create a renderable model of the “scene” depicted on the “Graphics Gems 2” book. To be more specific, to create a model that looks roughly like that:
Now you may wonder “where does that suddenly come from?” … so let me give a tiny bit of background: We – Adam Marrs, Pete Shirley, and I – recently brainstormed a bit about some “potentially” upcoming “Ray Tracing Gems II” book (which hasn’t been officially announced, yet, but ignore that for now), and while doing so we all realized how much we are, in fact, channeling the original “Graphics Gems” series (which at that time was awesome, by the way!).
Now at one instance, I was actually googling for the old books (to check if they used “II/III/IV” or “2/3/4” in the title, in case you were wondering), and while doing so stumbled over this really nice cover … which would probably look amazing if that was a properly ray traced 3D model rather than an artist’s sketch. And what could possibly be a better cover image – or test model – used in RTG2 than the original cover from GG2!?
So – if there is anybody around that know his modelling tools, and looking for a fun challenge: Here is one! If anybody does model this and has anything to share – ideally full model with public-access license, or even only just images – please send it over. I can of course not promise that we’ll actually use such material in said book (which so far is purely hypothetical, anyway) – but I’d find it amazing if we could find a way of doing so.
PS: Of course, a real-time demo of that scene would be totally awesome, too 🙂
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