Mirage is a raytracing system designed by Chris Butcher at the Graphics Research Laboratory, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. It was created over the period Dec 96 - Jan 97 and has been developed throughout 1997.
Mirage uses Constructive Solid Geometry to model objects through procedural modelling in C++. This is a method whereby models are built up of less complex components. All components are built from a collection of primitive objects supplied by Mirage using additive and subtractive operations.
The rendering system is a raytracer. Ray tracing is a method of making images that involves tracing one or more lines from the camera or eye point for each pixel in the image. These rays strike objects in the scene and may reflect from objects, be transmitted or generate new rays to test whether light sources are visible from a point on the objects's surface. This allows many effects such as shadowing, reflection, refraction and various illumination models.