Thanks for the quick replies!
Sadly its not ray casting or ray tracing.
Ray Marching sounds close to what I was looking for. Although the wiki
entry said it was a slow technique, and, as I understand it, it can be
done in real time.

Ill look more into the ray marching thing.
Thanks again!
~Ryan

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Robert Nesius <nesius at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps he really is looking for Ray Casting (in the context of surfaces,
> versus volumes) if he's looking for an alternative to Ray Tracing.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_casting
>
> Excerpt:
> Ray casting is not a synonym for ray tracing, but can be thought of as an
> abridged, and significantly faster, version of the ray tracing algorithm.
> Both are image order algorithms used in computer graphics to render three
> dimensional scenes to two dimensional screens by following rays of light
> from the eye of the observer to a light source. Ray casting does not compute
> the new direction a ray of light might take after intersecting a surface on
> its way from the eye to the source of light. This eliminates the possibility
> of accurately rendering reflections, refractions, or the natural falloff of
> shadows; however all of these elements can be faked to a degree, by creative
> use of texture maps or other methods. The high speed of calculation made ray
> casting a handy rendering method in early real-time 3D video games.
>
>
> -Rob
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 3:17 AM, Chris Barber <chris at cb1inc.com> wrote:
>>
>> Do you mean ray marching? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_ray_casting
>>
>>
>> On 1/31/10 11:53 PM, Ryan Hanson wrote:
>>
>> To the people who went to the penguins unbound thingy on Saturday.
>> I'm trying to figure out the other alternative to Ray Tracing that used
>> stepping.
>>
>> I tried searching for Ray Stepping but I didn't find anything.
>>
>> Any help?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
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>
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