Part 5/10:
To best understand path tracing, let's consider a specific example involving an artist creating a scene of a fantasy kingdom complete with a castle and a dragon. The modeling process begins with building the 3D shapes, typically broken down into thousands, if not millions, of triangles—which form the fundamental unit of 3D rendering for graphics processing units (GPUs).
Texturing assigns color and material properties to the models, while lights are strategically placed to simulate different times of day, ultimately culminating in rendering the scene with a virtual camera.