The "Hello World!" of Computer Graphics.

Image Output

There are lots of file formats to choose to pack raytracing results, and the one that the book recommended is PPM format.

PPM Format

PPM aka the portable pixmap format, along with the portable graymap format (PGM) and the portable bitmap format (PBM) are image file formats belong to Netpbm formats family, designed to be easily exchanged between platforms.

P3
3 2
255
# The part above is the header
# "P3" means this is a RGB color image in ASCII
# "3 2" is the width and height of the image in pixels
# "255" is the maximum value for each color
# The part below is image data: RGB triplets
255   0   0     0 255   0     0   0 255
255 255   0   255 255 255     0   0   0

save the code with .ppm extension and open in software like XnViewer :

C++ File Output

We can just use standard input/output stream objects from <iostream> to output results and copy them from command line and save as .ppm file, or we can write files directly with library <fstream>.

#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    // Resolution 200x100 pixels
    int nx = 200;
    int ny = 100;

    ofstream outfile( "render.ppm", ios_base::out);
    // Output to .ppm file
    outfile << "P3\n" << nx << " " << ny << "\n255\n";
    // Output to command line
    std::cout << "P3\n" << nx << " " << ny << "\n255\n";

    // Draw image pixels from top to bottom, left to right
    for (int j = ny-1; j >= 0; j--)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < nx; i++)
        {
            float r = float(i) / float(nx);
            float g = float(j) / float(ny);
            float b = 0.2;
            // Get rgb values within range (0.0, 1.0)
            // Cast to integers and map to (0, 255)
            int ir = int (255.99*r);
            int ig = int (255.99*g);
            int ib = int (255.99*b);

            outfile << ir << " " << ig << " " << ib << "\n";
            std::cout << ir << " " << ig << " " << ib << "\n";
        }
    }
}

Output image is the one on the top of the page.

Other Formats

On Peter Shirley’s Graphics Blog he introduced a small all-in-one image IO library: stb_image.h to output more common image formats. JPEG baseline & progressive (12 bpc/arithmetic not supported, same as stock IJG lib)

• PNG 1/2/4/8/16-bit-per-channel
• TGA (not sure what subset, if a subset)
• BMP non-1bpp, non-RLE
• PSD (composited view only, no extra channels, 8/16 bit-per-channel)
• GIF (*comp always reports as 4-channel)
• HDR (radiance rgbE format)
• PIC (Softimage PIC)
• PNM (PPM and PGM binary only)