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Peter Shirley
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Ray Tracing in One Weekend (Ray Tracing Minibooks Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Peter Shirley (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 319 ratings

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This informal book takes you through most of the author's university course on ray tracing. Each mini-chapter adds one feature to the ray tracer, and by the end the reader can produce the image on the book cover. Details of basic ray tracing code architecture and C++ classes are given.
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  1. Book 1 of 3
    Ray Tracing Minibooks
  2. Print length
    49 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publication date
    January 26, 2016
  5. File size
    13638 KB
  6. Page Flip
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  7. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
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  9. See all details
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01B5AODD8
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ (January 26, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 26, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 13638 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 49 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 319 ratings

About the author

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Peter Shirley

Peter Shirley

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I'm a Chicago transplant living in Salt Lake City, Utah. I have a physics degree from Reed College, but discovered computers when Professor Nicolas Wheeler forced me to do a ray tracing program in 1984. It was 2D ray tracing to do a caustic on a Vax and writing out the picture to a green Techtonix terminal. This convinced me to go to grad school in computer science at Illinois. I have been ray tracing ever since. I've done stints in various universities and companies and am currently in my own start-up company doing VR which is common but not using HMDs which is not!

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
319 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book's explanations simple and easy for non-technical people to understand. They find it an excellent entry-level tutorial for ray tracing, with math in practice. The examples are fun and satisfying. However, some customers report issues with the code quality, mentioning bugs and mistakes in the source code.

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Ease of useFun to readValue for moneyCode quality
20 customers mention "Ease of use"18 positive2 negative

Customers find the book easy to follow and understand. They say it's a good introduction to ray tracing with straightforward examples. The explanations are simple enough for non-technical people to understand. The book is a great learning resource, providing a quick introduction to turning math into pictures.

"...Short, easy to follow, not intimidating, and easily affordable if you're not sure if you want to invest in a huge book on the topic from square one...." Read more

"...It is very pragmatic and that approach suited me very well...." Read more

"...written a ray tracer in 2 decades so it was nice to have this easy to follow book to guide me through exactly what Peter Shirley taught back in Grad..." Read more

"...and the explanation of the concepts is simple enough for non technical people to understand...." Read more

6 customers mention "Fun to read"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the book easy to follow and the examples fun. They find it a great little exercise book for anyone wanting to get a taste. The results are satisfying, so it's a good choice.

"...Fun and exciting to generate some images again." Read more

"A very fun and quick intro to turning math into pictures...." Read more

"...Plus, you get the results pretty fast, so it is indeed satisfying." Read more

"It was a great read on the subject of ray tracing!! The examples were fun." Read more

3 customers mention "Value for money"3 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's low price, which makes it accessible to anyone interested in Raytracing.

"...Short, easy to follow, not intimidating, and easily affordable if you're not sure if you want to invest in a huge book on the topic from square one...." Read more

"...The low price means that anyone who is interested in RayTracing should pick this book up in the blink of an eye...." Read more

"...Well worth the price, in both time and money." Read more

4 customers mention "Code quality"0 positive4 negative

Customers find the code quality in the book poor. They mention there are bugs, mistakes, and logic errors in the source code.

"...As of the Kindle version of March 2018, there are multiple mistakes in the source code in said images..." Read more

"...There were a few bugs in the example code that I think have been fixed or at least I found fixes in blog comments...." Read more

"...But man, the code in the book was awful. The code is ancient C++ written in the infamous "C with classes" style...." Read more

"I found a few bugs in the presented code, image errors in the scatter function and an image in Kindle that didn't show up... it was only $3 so I..." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Beepboop
    5.0 out of 5 stars The easiest possible start to try Ray-Tracing. Do it!
    Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    I wish all computer science and computer graphics books were in this format. Short, easy to follow, not intimidating, and easily affordable if you're not sure if you want to invest in a huge book on the topic from square one. Peter has a good, clear, no-nonsense earnest tone which is refreshing. The hand-drawn diagrams are great - they are both clear and add a bit of personality and colour to topics that should be fun and colourful. I think if you've had about the equivalent of the first 2 introductory university courses in programming you'll have no problem following along.

    The images and code didn't always come out at a nice size on my original b&w Kindle, but when I'm looking at code I prefer to have the Amazon cloud/web reader open for reference anyway and that was ideal.

    No trees wasted.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Saapuu
    5.0 out of 5 stars A great little book that is all about how to start making a ray tracer
    Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    A small book that is all about how to start making a ray tracer. You'll only get to render some spheres in this book (but the later books in the series will get further), but even spheres will look great when you ray trace them.

    There's not much theory or anything like that found in the book, just the code and some explanation of how it works. It is very pragmatic and that approach suited me very well. I've now built my first simple ray tracer (well, maybe it is more Shirley's ray tracer than mine at this point), but now I understand mostly how it works, and can extend it with my own variations.

    If you've ever thought about writing a ray tracer one day, this is a really good book to start it off in just a few days. If you have some prior knowledge of how to get a compiler running, you'll probably get it done in a weekend.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • David Kopec
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book that Delivers on its Promise with some Polish Issues
    Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    As implied by the title, I was able to complete Ray Tracing in One Weekend in about 10 hours, including translating all of the source from C++ to Swift as I went. There's a reason this book is so popular: It's difficult to explain deep technical subjects like this concisely and Shirley does it well. Technical books on a subject like this tend to either be long-winded affairs in textbook format, or poorly written trade books. This book is neither long-winded nor poorly written. In that sense it's a triumph.

    Programming wise, you will need nothing more than the equivalent of two college courses (intro programming, object-oriented programming) to complete this book. I would call the level of programmatic difficulty "intermediate." Math wise, you will need high school level geometry as well as some basic knowledge of vectors including especially dot products & cross products. If you have never seen geometry described using three-dimensional vectors then this book will be impossible. Most of the intended readers likely have seen that math.

    So, if it's a well-written book that stays within its titular call-to-action, then what's the problem? Polish—the book lacks polish. This is the kind of problem that gives self-publishing a bad name. The source code snippets are presented in images with text so small that it is hard to read. As of the Kindle version of March 2018, there are multiple mistakes in the source code in said images (unused variables, wrong constants, actual logic errors), some of which Shirley explicitly changed in the Kindle text to point out, yet did not fix in the source code snippet images. His decision to use these convoluted source code images are explained away on his blog for expediency and in the introduction as incentive to type the code in. Yes, we should type the code in ourselves, but not at the expense of it being so small in the book that it's unreadable and hard for him to update to revise the Kindle edition.

    There other polish issues too — a lack of comments in the source code, text that could've used a good copy editor, hand drawn diagrams that are not as lucid as they could be. Shirley has written a great book, but he needs to clean it up so as not to continue to give self-publishing a bad name!
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Vivek Gupta
    5.0 out of 5 stars ... a ray tracer in 2 decades so it was nice to have this easy to follow book to guide ...
    Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    I haven't written a ray tracer in 2 decades so it was nice to have this easy to follow book to guide me through exactly what Peter Shirley taught back in Grad School! It really did take a weekend to do (I did it over a 3-day weekend so that I could do other things as well). Fun and exciting to generate some images again.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Rushil Kekre
    5.0 out of 5 stars A really great book to start with
    Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    A really great book to start with. The code works well (although it may need tweaking if you are running on visual studio) and the explanation of the concepts is simple enough for non technical people to understand. Peter Shirley's method of writing makes it very easy to read this book. Small enough to be done in a weekend and still quite full of knowledge.
    One person found this helpful
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  • selfsimilar
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great intro
    Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    A very fun and quick intro to turning math into pictures. There were a few bugs in the example code that I think have been fixed or at least I found fixes in blog comments. Well worth the time transcribing and playing with parameters.
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  • DarkKnight22
    3.0 out of 5 stars The code in this book makes my eyes bleed
    Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    I learned a lot from this book and didn't have much trouble implementing the project. But man, the code in the book was awful. The code is ancient C++ written in the infamous "C with classes" style. It isn't an expensive book by any means, but I felt the author really ought to put more time and effort into the code they wrote for a paid product.
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  • Michael
    5.0 out of 5 stars I love the way that it is short, precise and to the point.
    Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    The book has a nice flow of building up a Ray tracer from scratch. Quite a few sections I had to read a few times to get my head around it, but because the book is not filled with blah-blah, but rather to the point, it does not seem awkward at all.
    One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • michael kowal
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great, fun project
    Reviewed in Canada on October 1, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Good thing to do if you’re looking for an interesting project and have a little bit of time. The book provides all the code if you’d like to do it in c++ but also provides descriptions on how to do it in any language.
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  • Adam D
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very good intro to RT
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    This book is good because, while ray tracing is simple in principle, it showed me that getting started and actually producing results turned out to be much simpler than I thought. The book quickly shows the author's knowledge and wisdom on this subject, letting you know of file formats and conventions that get you up and running faster. And this is with just C++ with no external libraries!

    Every now and then you might need to look something up because the book doesn't go into detail on everything, focusing instead on telling you what you need to know to get results. One example would be that I wanted to learn more about the dot-product operation.

    If you're not interested in making your own vector class/functions, I'd recommend using the GLM ("OpenGL Mathematics") library by G-Truc Creation.

    Recommended for any graphics enthusiast. Fantastic value for money!
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  • Cliente Amazon
    5.0 out of 5 stars It delivers.
    Reviewed in Spain on January 3, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Easy code, chewed up.

    It works really well and it does allow to make a ray tracer in a weekend if you really put effort into it, tough I'm sure anyone putting half an hour each day would be able to.
    I took a non-objects approach, opposite to the one described in the book, but still all the theory and example code was explained well enough for me to follow without any problems.
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  • Sushi
    5.0 out of 5 stars Semplice ed efficace
    Reviewed in Italy on March 11, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    Ottimo libro per iniziare a giocare un po' con l'enorme e complicatissimo mondo dei RayTracer. Espone gli argomenti in maniera estremamente semplice ed efficace, utilizzando snippet di codici facili da compredere e molto chiari da leggere (questo ovviamente risulta in codice spesso non proprio ottimale, ma è pur sempre una guida base). Credo che valga assolutamente di spendere una cifra così irrisoria per comprarlo. Forse unica pecca è l'estrema sintesi di alcuni passaggi, ma nulla che una ricerca online non possa colmare. In definitiva mi sento di dire che per chiunque voglia immergersi in questo mondo non vi è modo migliore di imparare (ed ho provato molti tutorial online, ma nessuno è semplice ed efficace come questo).
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  • C. Helmich
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction to ray tracing
    Reviewed in Germany on March 31, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    This book gives an easy to understand and easy to implement introduction to ray tracing theory and practical implementation.
    It can be read in under an hour and implementing the examples shouldn’t take that long either.
    Have fun implementing your own ray tracer.
    Report

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