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cche

What are the main advantages of using Rasterization comparing to other rendering algorithms like ray-tracing? Is it only because that rasterization is faster? I think the renderings might not look as "realistic" as what ray-tracing does.

motoole2

Ah this is a great question!

Rasterization is indeed used to render images quickly. It requires computing the coordinates for its endpoints, and filling in the rest. This can be done extremely fast on modern GPUs.

We have not discussed this in class yet, but the process used in ray tracing is very different. Instead of mapping 3D points to 2D points, ray tracing does the exact opposite: it involves starting from 2D points on a sensor, tracing out rays into a scene, and checking whether these rays intersect any objects (e.g., 3D lines floating in space). This would be a very inefficient way to render out a line, but ray tracing does have other advantages, including the ability to capture certain types of effects as shown here (such as fog and reflections off the street).