About

The image at the top of the blog is an old, ray-traced image that I created years ago when I was first learning C++.  I recreated the image using Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer (POV-Ray) Version 3.6. The checkerboard alternates with an off red (RGB 0.98, 0.28, 0.36) and a very slightly blue white (RGB 0.98, 0.98, 1.0). The sphere is polished chrome hovering over the origin. The sky is the inside of a very large sphere with dark blue (RGB 0.0, 0.0, 0.6) at the top and light blue (RGB 0.3, 0.77, 0.99) near the horizon. The camera is pointed at just below the center of the sphere, located at about the same level as the sphere, and rotated horizontally about the origin slightly to the left (so the checkerboard doesn’t look symmetrical). It’s nothing particularly fancy for a ray-traced image. In a ray-traced image, reflective spheres are the easiest objects to draw, and checkerboard planes are the second easiest. That’s why you see lots of spheres and checkerboards in ray-traced images. I think the simple setup and the colors make the image interesting.