Acknowledgments
It’s traditional for authors to start by thanking their long-suffering families. This is not a tradition I’m about to break. First, my thanks go to my wife, Eileen, without whose support this book would not have been written. Eileen read the whole book about three times, and then the proofs, corrected innumerable grammar mistakes, improved my writing, and did a lot of work on the index. She did all the cooking and housework through this period, while completing her own diploma studies, and watched in despair as the number of urgent repair jobs on the house grew and grew. As a result, I probably have about a year’s work of repairs awaiting me.
My son Chris provided expert help with Adobe Illustrator and did all the curves in the figures. Chris also did the photography and graphic design for Figure 29.26. I’m very grateful for Chris’s help. My son Tim checked the references, for which I am also very grateful. And finally, my four-year-old grandson Broden gave me permission to use his photograph in Figure 29.26.
Paul Perry, a friend of 40 years, provided on more than one occasion advice and a quiet refuge in Melbourne for writing.
I would like to thank Erik Rienhard, who acted as my reviewer. Erik read the whole manuscript, found many mistakes, and made many suggestions that have improved this book. I’m honored that he also wrote the foreword. Frequent phone conversations with him were very helpful.
I would also like to thank Pete Shirley, who has helped and inspired me in several ways. For example, Pete suggested that I use orthonormal bases and use instances for ray tracing transformed objects. There is a lot of Pete’s work in this book, and it is the better for it.
The following people trialed early versions of the manuscript in their ray-tracing courses: Dave Breen at Drexel University, Bob Futrelle at Northeastern University, Steve Parker at the University of Utah, Erik Reinhard at the University of Central Florida, and Pete Shirley at the University of Utah. I wish to thank all of them.
Special thanks must go to Alice Peters at A K Peters, who believed in this book, right from the start, was amazingly patient during interminable delays on my part, and worked extremely hard to get it published for SIGGRAPH 2007. I particularly wish to thank Kevin Jackson-Mead, Senior Editor at A K Peters, who expertly edited the manuscript. This was a huge job. I also thank the typesetter, Erica Schultz, for an expert job.
Thanks go to Darren Wotherspoon at Skye Design for the beautiful cover design.
Richard Raban also deserves special thanks. Richard, as my Department Head at the University of Technology, Sydney, gave me a lot of support and a working environment that made writing easier. Chris W. Johnson and Helen Lu at UTS also read several chapters and pointed out mistakes.
The following students graciously provided permission to use their ray-traced images: Steve Agland, Nathan Andrews, John Avery, Peter Brownlow, David Gardner, Peter Georges, Mark Howard, Tania Humphreys, Daniel Kaestli, Adeel Khan, Mark Langsworth, Lisa Lönroth, Alistair McKinley, Jimmy Nguyen, Riley Perry, Duy Tran, and Ving Wong. Thank you all for your beautiful images, which have enhanced this book.
Thanks also go to Tania Humphreys for modeling and rendering the Mirage 2000 device by Opti-Gone Associates, to Alistair McKinley for implementing the ray-visualization software that made Figure 27.24(b) possible, and to Jimmy Nguyen for performing a number of file conversions.
The following students pointed out errors in the manuscript: Deepak Chaudhary, Tim Cooper, Ronnie Sunde, Ksenia Szeweva, and Mark White.
I must thank Naomi Hatchman for allowing me to use her penguin model in Chapters 23 and 29 and for a lot of work in supplying files in various formats and triangle resolutions.
I also thank James McNess for permission to use his goldfish model, shown on the cover and in Chapters 23 and 28.
There are two critical pieces of software associated with this book. One is the skeleton ray tracer. I’d like to thank Peter Kohout and James McGregor for producing early versions. I particularly thank Sverre Kvåle for writing the current version. Sverre also converted all the code files to PC format and tested the sample code. I am most grateful for all his work and his great programming skills.
The other is the website, built by HwaLeon (Ayo) Lee. Thank you, Ayo, for your generosity and professional development skills.
Ayo, James McGregor, Naomi, Peter, and Sverre have been students of mine; James McNess has been a student of Naomi.
Another student, Hong Son Nguyen, kindly produced a number of computer animations for the book and allowed me to put these on the website. Thank you, Hong.
My students, Naomi Hatchman, André Mazzone, Glen Sharah, Rangi Sutton, and the “UTS Amigos”: Steve Agland, Peter Brownlow, Chris Cooper, Peter Georges, Justen Marshall, Adrian Paul, and Brian Smith, have inspired me by earning credits on Academy Award winning films for their outstanding visual-effects work. The films include Happy Feet, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and The Matrix.
I have also benefited greatly from discussions with Paul Bourke about nonlinear projections and stereoscopy. Paul read Chapters 11 and 12, and as a result of his feedback, these chapters are now more relevant to real-world applications. He also permitted me to use material in these chapters from his website at http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/. I thank Paul for all his help.
I also thank Paul Debevec for permission to use the Uffizi probe image from his website at http://www.debevec.org/Probes/ and for providing advice on light-probe mappings.
Henrik Jensen provided advice on various aspects of ray tracing.
The following people and organizations allowed me to use various information. Stephen Addleman from Cyberware: images of the horse, Isis, and Ganesh models from http://www.cyberware.com/; James Hastings-Trew: Earth images in Chapter 29 from his website at http://planetpixelemporium.com/planets.html; Phillipe Hurbain: sky images from http://www.philohome.com/ in Chapters 11 and 12; Michael Levin from Opti-Gone International: material from http://www.optigone.com/ about the Mirage 2000 in Chapter 12; Ric Lopez-Fabrega at Lopez-Fabrega Design: sky images from http://www.lfgrafix.com in Chapter 29; Morgan Kaufmann Publishers: images and code in Chapter 31; Steve Parker at the University of Utah: the Cornell-box image in Chapter 26; Greg Turk: PLY code and various PLY models of the Stanford bunny at http://www.cc.gatech.edu/projects/large_models/index.html. I thank you all.
Finally, I wish to thank Eric Haines and Pete Shirley for graciously providing endorsements for the book.