Raytracing-- You Know, For Kids
One of my favorite pastimes as a boy was [ray tracing]. I loved measuring real world objects and meticulously duplicating them in the POV-Ray scene description language. I once set out on a mission to recreate my entire house, but got stumped by things that defied easy measurement like the toilets. I did manage to recreate the living room and the furniture in it though. I absolutely loved it; I daydreamed about it.As I was telling my son about it the other day I got to thinking about how I could introduce him to the wonderful world photorealism, and how it would be a great segue into programming concepts. Then after mentioning it to [Joel], we started discussing the idea of a ray tracing GUI on top of an engine like povray that did very simple wire frame modeling and key frame animation with primary colors and bulky lines.
Picture a dumbed down kid friendly interface with a seven year old at the helm ray tracing scenes that he has crafted to fit his fancy. Ray tracing is just plain cool; what boy could resist?
