Electronic funhouse mirror - or - Calling all ray-tracers?

[lorimt]

I want to build a funhouse mirror. I even have convoluted plans. But first, I'd like to try out a few electronic tests. Specifically, I want to find/build/acquire some program that will let you specify the surface of a funhouse mirror (at whatever resolution makes suff work, but basically, a set of x-y-z coordinates), then give it an image that is assumed to be directly in front of it, and see the resulting tranformation/map.

Does anyone have any brilliant ideas? Ray tracing seems relevant here, but I know next to nothing about it. Any clues on where to get started would be excellent.

Comments

[kinejoshua.livejournal.com]

It would be pretty easy to code but, you know, you'd have to code it.

I'm pretty sure you could use a standard ray-tracer, like POV-Ray. It's got "height field" and "patch" objects, one or both of which you could use to describe your surface. Then you set diffuse reflectivity to 0 and specular reflectivity to something not-0, and tada, you have a mirror. Plop in your picture, a camera, and some ambient lighting, and you are set.

It'll be a bit of a pain to figure out, but such is the sacrifice for funhouse mirrors. (And I think it's the least painful route.)

POV-Ray Documentation: Objects (http://www.povray.org/documentation/view/3.6.1/273/)

[lorimt]

That might be the way to go, if the Matlab one below can't handle what I'm looking for.