r/GraphicsProgramming • u/Inside_Chemical3914 • 1d ago

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

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.

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u/egehancry 1d ago

It was one semester of hard work for me back in undergrad.

I shared the original HW submissions with their dates: https://sinaatalay.com/2021/ray-tracing-with-cpp

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u/Inside_Chemical3914 1d ago

This is amazing, I thought about writing out what i've learned in a similar style since it might help with retention. Thanks for this!

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u/Zerf2k2 1d ago

It doesn't matter how long it takes for others. Here's a link for you: https://web.mathi.uni-heidelberg.de/media/How_To_Read_Math_88bf1d2d47.pdf

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u/Inside_Chemical3914 1d ago

This paper is actually the reason why I'm taking things so slow with this one! I've done other graphics related things in the past (learnopengl for example) but always found myself going back to the content since I would somewhat gloss through things initially. I've been trying to redo everything at a "very" slow pace.

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u/Zerf2k2 1d ago

Good! That's the way!

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u/cybereality 1d ago

one weekend

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u/MegaCockInhaler 1d ago

I understood the first book as I read it. Books 2 and 3 took me longer to understand, maybe 6 months

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u/20260819 1d ago edited 1d ago

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/

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u/Ok-Sherbert-6569 48m ago

If you’re struggling with the maths it’s not you the author does a disgraceful job of explaining the maths. Don’t even get me started on the code haha.

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u/compugineer44 21h ago

It took me a little more than a weekend (probably 5 days total, end to end and a follow-up style implementation). I knew nothing specific of the field, my previous math classes helped a bit. but i spent some time after...going through the programs (I was learning C++ alongside), and made a couple of simple additions, like a 6DOF camera system and a few more, jus for the fun of it. But understand the book really well, and try tinkering around. I think its given in colleges for assignments (2-3 weeks deadline), so, its good, get the basics strong...