Looking again at the memory models in Metal. Analyzing data copy vs no-copy methods. Understanding stack vs heap allocations. Page aligning the data using posix_memalign(). Looking again at the resource storage modes - Shared, Private, Memoryless and Managed. Considerations about resource coherency and synchronization between CPU and GPU.

Learning about the memory model in Metal. Defining Metal resources as Buffers and Textures. Presenting ways to create a Buffer. Defining the Resource Storage Modes. Presenting the address space qualifiers for function variables and arguments. Looking at UnsafePointer and Pointee as another way to aceess memory locations.

Learning about Ambient Occlusion in Metal. Using more distance functions - rectangular shapes. Introducing cone tracing as a derivative of ray tracing using "thicker" rays. Using spheres with different radii to approximate a cone. Marching along the cone instead of a ray, to determine how much light is occluded. Replacing the circling light source with a moving camera so we can examine the entire scene.

Learning about Soft Shadows in Metal. Returning to Raymarching to build a complex 3D scene using distance operation functions. Learning how to calculate normals and the visualizing them. Learning how to use normals to calculate diffuse and specular lighting. Determining hard shadows as well as soft shadows for objects in a 3D scene.

Learning about Shadows in Metal. Building custom functions and operators such as modulus. Creating a light source and animating it around the scene. Creating a shadows function based on the distance and direction to the light. Marching along the light ray and improving the number of steps needed for faster shadows.