programing a raytracer

[oodmb]

lol throws throwable. i've never actualy had a problem with it crashing, i've generaly had alot of luck with the threads.

[Behrendt]

Hey guys!
I also have to write a raytracer for a school-project. I clicked through this thread and picked up some languages like C++ and Java, in which I could write the raytracer. But the problem is I have no experience in those. Do you think it's possible for me to get a working raytracer until 10.3.2008 ?
Thx for any help,advice or anything else

[Kram1032]

Is this a serious question?
If you either copy+paste the code, or are a very good learner for programming languages....
there's a chance, but not a big one, I bet

[Behrendt]

No, copy+paste is definetly not the way i wanted to get through this.

[Kram1032]

but wait... you have one year...
hum...
half a year, to learn the basics in one of the two, the rest, to learn the things, you need to raytrace and to debug^^ might work

[eman7613]

It depends on your skill in these types of things and the amount of free time you have to devote to this project.

If you don't have prior experience with either C++ or Java, id suggests java just so you don't have to worry about memory leaks so much.

[Behrendt]

but wait... you have one year...
hum...
half a year, to learn the basics in one of the two, the rest, to learn the things, you need to raytrace and to debug^^ might work

Unfortunately is October-> March no whole year
But now that i read through some papers it seems kinda more strange that somebody shall done this before in only 2 weeks... but hmm... I think I'll give it a shot

[oodmb]

i basicaly got my raytracer working one year after having started learning to program (alot less actualy)

i only started learning to program about this time last year, and attempted my raytracer right around march. i realy only got it working about may though, so i dont know.

it realy depends on well you end up understanding the language. some people take years to understand a language fully, some people just take a week and feel as though its a language they never knew they knew.

[zsouthboy]

Have experience in programming in any language, even the non-target, is > no experience.

As long as you "get" the general idea of programming, I've found, you can switch languages (learning the nuances and "gotchas" along the way), without it being too big a deal.

It's much harder if you don't "think" in programming terms, though.

[Behrendt]

Learned a bit of Pascal,Delphi and Prolog at school.

[Kram1032]

Prolog wont be helpful for that, the other two, I don't know, but I think, they should be a good starting point for Java (don't take me by word, though: I learned neither Pascal, nor Delphi, not Java^^)

[oodmb]

are they object oriented, because object orientation becomes a big issue in ray tracing. it can be done without it, but its very hard to do and becomes non extensible.

[Kram1032]

Prolog is logic - it's based on rules.
It's for programming AI, as I said, already

Prolog
Pascal
"D" (not sure, if that's delphi, for real)

[Knaxknarke]

Prolog wont be helpful for that, the other two, I don't know, but I think, they should be a good starting point for Java (don't take me by word, though: I learned neither Pascal, nor Delphi, not Java^^)

Delphi is an IDE and a class library and the language is Object Pascal, an OOP extension to Turbo Pascals dialect. It should be no problem to write the ray tracing code with Delphi. No need to waste time learning Java or even Cpp.