I wrote a Mathematica package that "renders some 3D graphics beautifully" (uses raytracing). The real question is at the END.
(image rendered at a low resolution)
https://sourceforge.net/p/rayshade-math/
It's next todo or flaw is it needs upgrade so that textures applied to graphics are done the way Mathematica language does it (exact and vertex spec) rather than "automatic only". I have little time to do "everything" (to fix it all ways but Sunday i cannot do, no profits, cannot hire staff).
Here's a tradeoff problem: Mathematica Online now let's us access documents on iPhone. But rayshade-math requires external binary (ie, runs on iMac) - so trying to use it wouldn't work on iPhone, I assume.
I could re-code the raytracer to run as Mathematica code (translate it from C to .m). But this is a shame because currently rayshade-math supports two GPL raytracers and I was hoping to support (some professional ones, their parsed language) in the future. I'd loose 1/2 the raytrace language support and be completely cut off from supporting Graphics3D -> cutting edge professional raytracer rendering.
I can continue coding in Mathematica to translate Grahics input to raytracer langage (but it requires external bin raytracer).
I have little time I can't imagine I'd ever be able to both.
MY CHOICES SEEM TO BE:
slowly improve external bin support to rayshade-mathematica (add language parsing), forget about iPhone and Mathematica Online, will only run on any PC/laptop
improve Mathematica / Online with basic raytracing supported as a package: but be forced to support only 1 raytracer language / method (ie, rayshade but looks POVRay support).
write raytracer code in Mathematica code but add facility that this parses various languages (that's parsing each language 2x 2 different ways): possible but not realistic time-wise
QUESTION: AM I MSSING SOMETHING? ARE THERE OTHER CHOICES? DOES MATHEMATICA ONLINE SUPPORT external bins running on remote machines?
Thank you