
Ray Tracing Jell-O Brand Gelatin (1987) [pdf] - gcv
http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ago820/cs395/Papers/Heckbert_1987.pdf
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kens
This article is by Paul Heckbert, who is also known for writing a raytracer
that fit on the back of his business card.
[http://fabiensanglard.net/rayTracing_back_of_business_card/](http://fabiensanglard.net/rayTracing_back_of_business_card/)

Since there seems to be some confusion in the comments, I'll point out that
the Jell-O paper is 100% not serious. It's a satire of excessively-
mathematical computer graphics papers. (Source: I shared an office with Paul.)

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gdubs
Famous 1984 distributed ray tracing image [1] remains one of my all-time
favorite CG images. (Scroll to last page.)

1:
[http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs6965/papers/p137-cook.pdf](http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs6965/papers/p137-cook.pdf)

~~~
s-macke
Don't forget the first rendered fur.

[http://simulationcorner.net/fur.png](http://simulationcorner.net/fur.png)

The bear looks still so nice. Even nowadays The picture is from this paper
from 1989:

[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=74361](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=74361)

~~~
gdubs
Great image, hadn't seen that one before. The lighting model is beautiful.

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kanwisher
I like the part where he needs a room full of Amigas or a Cray to render the
image

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derefr
Reminds me of a
[http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Null](http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Null),
somewhat. (1987 graphics tech is about right for a 1994 TV show.)

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yosyp
What a fun paper, but seems like a cute joke to me. All that the author did
was use the basic wave equation with changed variables to simulate Jell-O. The
article has algorithm and theory tags, but this is neither.

I wish they had gone into detail about the numerical algorithm used to
simulate the wave equation in three dimensions (Runga-Kutta order 4
probably?). As someone with a physics background, this is far from theory, or
even original research.

It's interesting that they mention the necessity of Markov Chains for
intersection calculations. Would anyone know if better techniques have been
devised since the publication of this paper?

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Someone
Does anybody know more about the joke with the reference to [Haeberli, 1872],
a paper by Paul Haeberli and Paul Heckbert, which is "to appear"?

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frozenport
WHY DOES HE REFER TO HIMSELF IN THE PLURAL?

~~~
sjtrny
Standard style in scientific literature. Partly due to blind peer review
(using the more general 'we' instead of 'I' to mask the identity/identities of
the author).

