+ FART is my semester project for the Computer Science 658 class + at Grand Valley State University. + My goal is for FART to be a distributed, fault-tolerant, + object-oriented raytracer. + The name is a + recursive acronym + similar to GNU or LAME. +
++ The input to the program will be a scene description file. + Scene description files are structured ASCII documents. + The format is a hierarchical layout of scene options and elements. + After the scene file is parsed, the scene will be raytraced + (rendered) according to the render options. + Some of these options can be specified on the command line and + others can be specified in the scene description file. + When a given option can be specified both places, the command-line + options will override what is in the scene file. +
++ Rendering can be done using the built-in task distribution + infrastructure. + Command-line options will be utilized to specify a "hosts file" + which can contain a list of hosts to use while rendering the scene. + The algorithm is fault-tolerant so that if any of the worker + nodes goes down the tasks can be reorganized so other nodes + complete what the faulty nodes did not. +
+ + ++ I used an object-oriented model for the program. + Each displayable scene object is represented by a C++ object + which inherits from the Shape base-class, while light objects + inherit from a base Light class. +
++ Shape objects implement an intersect() method. + Polymorphism is utilized so that when the scene attempts to + intersect a Ray with a shape object, it does not need + to know the actual type of shape object being intersected with. +
++ The task distribution infrastructure is implemented in a class + called distrib. + This package contains methods to start up a server thread, launch + slave processes on the worker nodes, and connect back from the + slave processes to the master server. +
+ + ++ The design document for FART is available + here. +
+ + +