Raytracer Rules

Thinking about the Raytracer, I am about to write. I figured that there must be some CS school assignments already setting rules for this subject. Google search revealed some of them:

• http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/jkh/www/462_s07/assts/assignment3/
• http://www.mikejutan.com/raytracer/
• http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp//courses/graphics/asst7/
• http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/online/box/data.html
• http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall96/cs426/Assignments/Project5.html
• http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~gfx/Courses/2004/Intro.Fall.04/assignments/raytracer.html
• http://www.jasonwaltman.com/graphics/raytracing.html
• http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2003/cs4451a_fall/a5.html
• http://www.gg.caltech.edu/~cs174ta/Winter/Homework/Homework2/homework2.html
• http://www.cs.lth.se/EDA101/assignments/assignment1/
• http://www.cs.unc.edu/~salomon/COMP236/hw4/
• http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~cohen/RenderingTechniques/assignment1.html

I like the first assignment the most, so these are the rules, I'm setting for myself

1. Functional requirements
   1. Reflective spheres
   2. Rectangles (preferably checkered planes as well :) )
   3. Scene parser
   4. Blender exporter of geometry and scene settings
   5. Output in some braindead file format, probably just RGBRGB or PPM
   6. Spatial partitioning
   7. Bonus - Cornell Box
2. Time and size contraints
   1. Deadline 15th August
   2. Three reflective spheres on checkered background in 1024x768 have to be rendered in less than 30s

The speed constrain is pretty vague, but since I don't have anything to benchmark it against, let's stick with this.