Thanks for the replies everyone, I think I get it now
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Right now lighting doesn’t “move” around, it is “pre-lit.” What this means is that if a light source is behind your back, you’d expect the shadow to be cast on your front, except that it may appear towards the light source (which is not possible in real life). Think of light like make up, it’s just kind of brushed into certain areas and textures to make it look like light is there.
Ray Tracing just means that the model of light they are using acts closer to a beam of light or laser, hence the “Ray” in ray tracing. In the old model, if you hold a mirror to a light source, it would not “reflect” that light, the mirror wouldn’t become shinier. The current model would make that mirror shiny as the simulated light projected by the light source understands that it travels out from the light source, and bounces off the surface of the mirror. As we know, for us to see, beams of light bounce off everything, and carry some residual energy as they bounce off surfaces to illuminate other surfaces as they bounce more. Ray Tracing mimics this by producing rays of light that bounce off objects in the animated universe which cause “dynamic” lighting. Which means if you move your character around, the light source has changed it’s position from you, so the light beams hit you different, and so the shadow adjusts to the appropriate angle, and the residual light bouncing off your character may illuminate other parts of the environment. Once you take this idea, you can apply it to everything in the environment. The tree branches move, and so the light beams hit them differently as the trees move which will change the shadows on the ground. Reflective surfaces are actually reflective, if you take a broken piece of glass, and toss it somewhere, the light beams hit an object, get reflected to the broken glass, then reflected into your “character’s eyes”.
I hope that makes sense for an ELI5.
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