Raytracing

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Bryce renders images using a technique known as Raytracing. In the case of a photograph, any given pixel's color is the result of light coming from a scene, through a lens, and onto the film. Raytracing does the inverse. Virtual rays of light are shot from the virtual "film" through a mathematical "camera" and out into a 3D scene. As they pass through the scene, these rays collide with objects. The object they collide with is assigned a color. For example, if it hits a gray object, then that gray color ends up on that portion of the "film" or your final image.

Raytracing becomes much more complex when the beam strikes an object that has reflective, transparent, refractive, or other complex optical properties. These properties can cause the ray to be traced further into your scene, where it could end up bouncing from mirrors, dissipating through fog, or bending through a chunk of dense glass. Eventually, a final color is determined for each pixel.

This technique can involve staggering amounts of computation which might make it impractical or impossible to use, but Bryce contains raytracing algorithms optimized for the task of creating natural and supernatural landscapes of all kinds.

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