Assignment 3 : An Update

This assignment has been extremely difficult so far. Luckily, we have one "late pass" to use over the semester. We can turn in an assignment by the time the next one is due. I plan on using it for this project. Joe Kniss, the graphics professor, is an extremely cool guy and a great lecturer. Never before have I had a math teacher/professor that makes the mathematics so interesting. I've been working like mad on this project, but the C++ and vector math aren't something I'm used to. For the past two years, I haven't dealt with memory management at all (I like Python & Java.)

Tonight I finished the perspective view and all the object stuff. All the math was worked out a couple of days ago, but I was fighting C++ (and idiot mistake) bugs a lot. I had a pass-by-value method that I thought was pass by reference, even thought I wasn't de-referencing any pointer... The other big mistake I corrected tonight was the fact that I was using the center point I calculated for my view plane, BEFORE I actually calculated what that center point was. It was awfully "nice" that the Point3D class I am using allows that, but hey I could always write error checking. Any sort of assertion or some error checking would have been good. The bugs weren't too bad, but I kept second guessing myself with all the math, so everything took basically the entire day to get basic shapes up. 10 hours of programming today (and about 50 from earlier), and I don't have too cool of a picture yet.

Just an intermediate result, more coming soon!

My girlfriend Kate has been extremely nice to me during the self-imposed hermitage of ray tracing. I had two laundry pickups and drop offs, lots of kisses, hugs and massages. Once I get this assignment done, I am going to take her someplace nice to eat and hopefully to a romantic evening.