Ray-Traced Treasure Chest Project

Student: Kenneth Ramirez
Course: CMPS 3480 – Computer Graphics
Instructor: Gordon Griesel
Semester: Fall 2025

Project Overview

• This project is a ray-traced scene of a treasure chest that opens and reveals a glowing interior.
• The glow lights up the floor and fades smoothly into darkness.
• I started from our Lab 7–8 glow program and expanded it into a full scene.
• I used techniques from class including ray tracing, ray-object intersections, shading, falloff, and animation.

How I Started

This is the very first version from Lab 7–8, just a glowing sphere in a dark space to practice glow and falloff:

• This helped me understand glow, soft lighting, and fade-to-black falloff.
• No chest, no geometry — just the basic lighting foundation.

Inspiration for the Final Look

These reference images guided how I wanted the final chest to look.

Realistic glowing chest reference:

• Bright interior glow.
• Light spilling onto the floor.
• Soft fog-like bloom.

Chest shape reference:

• Used for lid shape, hinge behavior, and front-panel layout.
• Helped me build a simple but recognizable chest shape.

How the Ray Tracer Works

• The camera shoots rays through each pixel.
• Each ray checks for intersections with:
  • Chest base
  • Chest lid
  • Floor plane
• Shading uses ambient + diffuse + specular terms.
• The inside glow uses ray marching to make it soft instead of a hard cutoff.

Scene Breakdown

• Chest Base: Rectangular object with wood-like colors.
• Lid: Separate piece that rotates open over time.
• Light Source: A bright point inside the chest.
• Floor: Captures glow and falloff.

Animation

• The lid opens smoothly from frame to frame.
• Glow intensifies as the lid opens wider.
• Rendered as a sequence of PPM images, then converted into an MP4 animation.

Techniques Used

• Ray Tracing: Pixel-by-pixel ray casting, object intersections, normals.
• Ray Marching: Used to create the soft glowing interior of the chest.
• Phong Lighting: Ambient, diffuse, and specular shading.
• Falloff Lighting: Smooth fade into darkness, avoiding hard edges.
• Model Construction: Chest created from simple geometric primitives (boxes, panels, lid).
• Animation: Lid rotation and glow changes rendered frame-by-frame.