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Rendering Images Using LaTeX

As an example of LaTeX's Turing completeness and capabilities to do floating point arithmetic, this repository demonstrates how to use LaTeX to render a sphere using Phong shading. The images below are rendered using LaTeX.

example1 example2

See shading.pdf for more details about shading parameters.

Requirements

  • LaTeX compiler
  • Linux system (for running Makefiles)
  • Python 3.6+ with Pillow

Use the Makefile to generate the images.

Why is Python required

  • LaTeX cannot output binary file directly (see discussion here, LaTeX can output arbitrary bytes, but it will also output \x0A after each \write call)

    • To cope with this issue, we use LaTeX to output the byte in decimal format, and use Python to convert them into binary
    • Note that if LuaTeX is used, Lua can be used to write binary output

  • LaTeX cannot include BMP files directly

    • For simplicity, the rendered pixels are saved using the BMP format
    • However, (most) LaTeX distributions cannot use BMP files directly
    • We use Python to convert BMP images into PNG so that they can be included in the PDF file

Because Python is used, -shell-escape option must be enabled during compiling.

What is implemented

  • A pure LaTeX implementation for writing BMP image files
  • A pure LaTeX implementation for Phong shading