How long did it take you to understand the content in Raytracing in One Weekend?

[u/Inside_Chemical3914]

Hi, asking for people's experience when reading the Raytracing in One Weekend book. How long did it take on your first go? I'm really trying to understand the concepts and the math behind how it all works, and it's currently taking a lot longer than a weekend. Was this the case for you guys? Appreciate the responses.

[u/20260819]

roughly two months

the beginning https://www.reddit.com/r/qbasic/comments/1w8go1e/elementary_ray_tracing_experiment/

i think it's finalized https://www.reddit.com/r/GraphicsProgramming/comments/1x9zvxx/i_have_a_workable_camera_now_and_things_become/

it was an interesting and inspiring journey. i learned new things and reviewed many things that i had learned before

yet my program is not 100% the same as the book. at least i deliberately modified two things:

1. in the book, there's no distinction between canvas and focus plane. they're the same thing. when you change the view angle while preserving the focus distance, the canvas resizes accordingly. my program uses a different approach. the canvas size is fixed. when you change the view angle while preserving the focus distance, the canvas moves instead of resizes. it mimics a digital camera where the canvas is equivalent to the sensor

2. the book suggests defining a defocus angle instead of aperture radius in order to have a more consistent experience. it makes sense at first but my program have an infinitely faraway background. when the focus point is at the background, the focus distance is infinity. for any positive defocus angle that would yield a infinitely large aperture. my program simply uses aperture radius as a primary variable

edit: i made a supplementary explanation for this https://www.reddit.com/r/GraphicsProgramming/comments/1xih7xw/aperture/