- ray tracing refers to the general problem of finding an intersection between a ray and the closest scene surfacing. It is most commonly asociated with techniques that intersect discrete primitives like triangles and usually employ acceleration structures like bounding volume hierarchies or kd-trees to make that fast.
- ray marching is a related, but actually separate technique where the algorithm steps along the ray in discrete steps. It can accumulate values along the way, if needed. This is used e.g. for volume visualizations (e.g. 3D CT scan visualization or clouds in movies). You can also use that concept to find intersections with surfaces that do nit have/require closed form solutions for ray intersections. This is how you eventually arive at sphere tracing for signed distance fields and the stunning image by iq et al. that are created entirely from math expressions for the surfaces.
- ray tracing refers to the general problem of finding an intersection between a ray and the closest scene surfacing. It is most commonly asociated with techniques that intersect discrete primitives like triangles and usually employ acceleration structures like bounding volume hierarchies or kd-trees to make that fast.
- ray marching is a related, but actually separate technique where the algorithm steps along the ray in discrete steps. It can accumulate values along the way, if needed. This is used e.g. for volume visualizations (e.g. 3D CT scan visualization or clouds in movies). You can also use that concept to find intersections with surfaces that do nit have/require closed form solutions for ray intersections. This is how you eventually arive at sphere tracing for signed distance fields and the stunning image by iq et al. that are created entirely from math expressions for the surfaces.