Quick overview:

RAY++ is a collection of C++ classes needed for ray tracing (shapes, surfaces, cameras etc.). The object-oriented design makes it easy to extend the package. RAY++ is distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL).

Authors:

The first release of RAY++ was implemented by Martin Reinecke.
In July 1998 Andreas Kahler joined development.
Neeharika Adabala is working on volume shaders for Ray++.

Goals:

This package could best be described as a 'plug-and-play' ray tracer. It might be interesting for all those folks who miss one feature or another in the 'industrial strength' packages (e.g. POV-Ray) or just like ray tracer programming, but don't have the time to write their own ray tracer from scratch.

If you belong to this people, I encourage you to write extensions to RAY++ and send them to me so that I can include them in the next release. There are virtually no limits for your fantasy: you can implement your own shapes, light sources, surface textures, volume shaders and cameras. It is even possible to implement a completely different ray tracing algorithm (e.g. general relativistic ray tracing) or animation support just by adding a new class.

Feedback:

If you have any bug reports, comments, suggestions, questions, flames etc., please contact me, because I need a lot of feedback for this project. To know that other people are interested in what I'm doing is the best motivation for working on RAY++ I can think of.

If you have created interesting pictures with RAY++, please send them to me and I will add them to the Ray++ gallery.