Sharks with Freakin' Rays!

Raytracer? I thought they said Jaytracer!

So for this assignment, we had to take descriptions of a scene, such as this below (the numbers specify positions, directions, shininess, etc.):

camera  0.5 1 5  0 0 -1  0 1 0  0.5   0.01 100

dir_light  1 1 1        -3 -4 -5
dir_light  0.5 0.5 0.5   3 2 3

material 0.2 0.2 0.2  1 0 0  0.5 0.5 0.5  0 0 0  10 0 0 0
material 0.2 0.2 0.2  0 0 1  0.5 0.5 0.5  0 0 0  100 0 0 0
material 0.2 0.2 0.2  0.4 0.4 0   1 0.5 0.5 0 0 0 100 0 0 0

sphere   0  1 1 1  1   
sphere   1  2.8 3 2  .3
sphere   1  1.4 3 2  .3

cone     2  0.8 1.45   0  1 0.5
cylinder  1  -.3  0      0  .1 5
sphere   0 -.3  1  0    .3

And then raytrace it into a cool 3-D image. Or, to take a mesh model and make it realistic looking, such as:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AND NOW BEHOLD, FOR I HAVE RIDDEN THE MIGHTY SPACE WORM AND RETURNED
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And in case you're wondering...

Yes, the top image was generated from those few lines of text!

I also made a small movie (in DivX format) of the camera moving along. Note that I didn't render the movie images in high resolution, so it may seem a bit grainy.

I also made the following web page when I turned in the assignment, since we're required to demonstrate all the features we implement. So if you want to see what else this sucker can do, go there! All the images there are low res, though, to make it easier for the grader to generate them manually. Still, it gives a good idea of what it can do in higher resolution, like the above two!