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Ray Tracing in One Weekend
This informal book takes you through most of the author's university course on ray tracing. Each mini-chapter adds one feature to the ray tracer, and by the end the reader can produce the image on the book cover. Details of basic ray tracing code architecture and C++ classes are given.
49 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 26, 2016
122 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
About the author
Peter Shirley
16 books1 followerLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.
Other authors publishing under this name are:
Peter Shirley, UK wildlife writer and columnist
Peter Shirley, American computer scientist and computer graphics researcher
Other authors publishing under this name are:
Peter Shirley, UK wildlife writer and columnist
Peter Shirley, American computer scientist and computer graphics researcher
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 18, 2019
A very nice tutorial! It's light on theory, but allows you to get started in ray tracing pretty quickly and generate beautiful images with your own code, just printing pixels colours to PPM image text files (no OpenGL or other heavy weight libraries). I liked the hand-drawn diagrams and author's terse and "to the point" narration style.
I've coded this project in Rust, check it out :)
https://github.com/sphynx/rt
I've coded this project in Rust, check it out :)
https://github.com/sphynx/rt
March 18, 2018
As implied by the title, I was able to complete Ray Tracing in One Weekend in about 10 hours, including translating all of the source from C++ to Swift as I went. There's a reason this book is so popular: It's difficult to explain deep technical subjects like this concisely and Shirley does it well. Technical books on a subject like this tend to either be long-winded affairs in textbook format, or poorly written trade books. This book is neither long-winded nor poorly written. In that sense it's a triumph.
Programming wise, you will need nothing more than the equivalent of two college courses (intro programming, object-oriented programming) to complete this book. I would call the level of programmatic difficulty "intermediate." Math wise, you will need high school level geometry as well as some basic knowledge of vectors including especially dot products & cross products. If you have never seen geometry described using three-dimensional vectors then this book will be impossible. Most of the intended readers likely have seen that math.
So, if it's a well-written book that stays within its titular call-to-action, then what's the problem? Polish—the book lacks polish. This is the kind of problem that gives self-publishing a bad name. The source code snippets are presented in images with text so small that it is hard to read. As of the Kindle version of March 2018, there are multiple mistakes in the source code in said images (unused variables, wrong constants, actual logic errors), some of which Shirley explicitly changed in the Kindle text to point out, yet did not fix in the source code snippet images. His decision to use these convoluted source code images are explained away on his blog for expediency and in the introduction as incentive to type the code in. Yes, we should type the code in ourselves, but not at the expense of it being so small in the book that it's unreadable and hard for him to update to revise the Kindle edition.
There other polish issues too — a lack of comments in the source code, text that could've used a good copy editor, hand drawn diagrams that are not as lucid as they could be. Shirley has written a great book, but he needs to clean it up so as not to continue to give self-publishing a bad name!
Programming wise, you will need nothing more than the equivalent of two college courses (intro programming, object-oriented programming) to complete this book. I would call the level of programmatic difficulty "intermediate." Math wise, you will need high school level geometry as well as some basic knowledge of vectors including especially dot products & cross products. If you have never seen geometry described using three-dimensional vectors then this book will be impossible. Most of the intended readers likely have seen that math.
So, if it's a well-written book that stays within its titular call-to-action, then what's the problem? Polish—the book lacks polish. This is the kind of problem that gives self-publishing a bad name. The source code snippets are presented in images with text so small that it is hard to read. As of the Kindle version of March 2018, there are multiple mistakes in the source code in said images (unused variables, wrong constants, actual logic errors), some of which Shirley explicitly changed in the Kindle text to point out, yet did not fix in the source code snippet images. His decision to use these convoluted source code images are explained away on his blog for expediency and in the introduction as incentive to type the code in. Yes, we should type the code in ourselves, but not at the expense of it being so small in the book that it's unreadable and hard for him to update to revise the Kindle edition.
There other polish issues too — a lack of comments in the source code, text that could've used a good copy editor, hand drawn diagrams that are not as lucid as they could be. Shirley has written a great book, but he needs to clean it up so as not to continue to give self-publishing a bad name!
December 24, 2017
(I mean, I took a course from Pete in grad school, so of course I'm biased) I picked this up to have a small project through which to get back into Rust. The book doesn't disappoint.
I'll tell you this - I've never written anything else that comes near this ratio of satisfaction per line of code. Highly, highly recommended.
I'll tell you this - I've never written anything else that comes near this ratio of satisfaction per line of code. Highly, highly recommended.
August 27, 2025
Took me more than a weekend to fully grasp what was going on in this book. The concepts presented are similar to those from a computer graphics course I took in my senior year of university, but this book leans more toward the technical and implementation side. It's an excellent resource for learning basic trigonometry and C++. I personally read it for the C++ aspects.
I have implemented the book's examples and created a GitHub repository for it, adding a Makefile to simplify the build process. You can find the repository here: . I definitely plan to read the other two books in the series and add their implementations to the same repository.
I have implemented the book's examples and created a GitHub repository for it, adding a Makefile to simplify the build process. You can find the repository here: . I definitely plan to read the other two books in the series and add their implementations to the same repository.
April 26, 2020
This was a ton of fun! Translating the easy-to-follow code to Haskell and seeing my code produce images that matched those in the book was immensely satisfying (and also pushed me to use Haskell features that I had been confused about before). It took me a bit longer than a weekend though.
The book series is now available for free at https://raytracing.github.io/, and is also open source (I've submitted a couple copy edits).
The book series is now available for free at https://raytracing.github.io/, and is also open source (I've submitted a couple copy edits).
December 2, 2018
Great approach to writing a quick path tracer to gives impressive results.
A little bit light on the Fresnel equation details, and the code contains some strange sign choices here and there, but overall, great read and a lot of fun to co-implement as you read.
A little bit light on the Fresnel equation details, and the code contains some strange sign choices here and there, but overall, great read and a lot of fun to co-implement as you read.
Read
September 11, 2019Great into to ray tracing
Concisely introduces the core concepts of ray tracing. The example code is easy to understand and satisfying to compile & run as you go. A short & enjoyable graphics book that I frequently recommended to others.
Concisely introduces the core concepts of ray tracing. The example code is easy to understand and satisfying to compile & run as you go. A short & enjoyable graphics book that I frequently recommended to others.
December 26, 2017
This book reminded me of Advanced Computer Graphics classes. Reading about ray tracing is boring (it's just normal physics) but implementation is damn fun.
July 16, 2018
Very well written and easy to follow. I don't read all the code but the math and explanation are very interesting. A must read for anyone want to start writing Ray Tracer.
March 11, 2019
Very practical book to get into ray tracing.
July 3, 2019
Simple and fantastic resource!
A great learning resource, full of straightforward examples. Provides a great foundation for learning how to build a working raytracer.
A great learning resource, full of straightforward examples. Provides a great foundation for learning how to build a working raytracer.
Read
August 26, 2019This one is a gem :)
December 3, 2020
If you are a beginner or intermediate, want to build your own path tracer. This is your book.
March 9, 2024
Great intro to ray tracing through an easy-to-follow project. I had a blast working through the material.
May 22, 2017
I really enjoyed this book. It's a very light reference that presents you with a raytracer that can produce some fairly nice-looking images. I don't think that this is a weekend project as the book makes it out to be. I think one to two weeks is a much more reasonable timeframe to complete the raytracer defined in this book. Some of the equations and code (EG: ray refraction, Shlick's approximation) were quickly glossed over, and required additional work from the reader to understand. At the end of the day, it is a very nice, short implementation-centric book that produces pretty pictures, so I recommend it.
October 20, 2017
Overall, this mini-book is like a notepad with lecture notes. Short explanations, hand drawn images and code snippets are there, but you have to do additional research and organise exercise labs on your own. If you are willing to do this, then this book is for you and can bring you some fun and satisfaction. You can find more detailed review and example pictures here:
http://mariuszbartosik.com/books/ray-...
http://mariuszbartosik.com/books/ray-...
October 24, 2016
This is a fantastic introduction to producing images with code. This book quickly allows the reader to grasp the simplicity and elegance of the ray-tracing algorithm without a single external piece of code or library. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to become a better texturing/shading artist as well as for those looking to write their own software.
July 14, 2016
Delivers nice rendered pictures in a minimum number of pages.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews