Every hacker should do some instant-gratification hacking now and then for a break, and there's nothing more instant-gratification than doing raytracing using a Renderman class raytracer.
These pages are an informal log of me learning RenderMan-style photo-realistic computer graphics by playing around doing whatever takes my fancy. You might find some useful examples or tools on these pages, or just cool eye candy.
If you're on an X-based system and find that the images look dark,
you may need to do 'xgamma -gamma 2.2'. If you're on an Apple or
Microsoft box, you probably have a more reasonable display gamma
default, but might still need to adjust it. There is a page on
setting gamma correction on MS-Windows boxes here. There's a page on doing this for
other operating systems here.. If those links are dead, go to
Google and search for something
like display gamma adjust set control panel.
If you like this page, you might enjoy
Imagining the
Imagined: Modelling with Math & a Keyboard.