I have been learning it for a while. It is very complicated. So don't expect to learn it over night. You have to do your homework. Play with simple demos. Read lots of beginning tutorials, until it starts to sink in. So don't get discouraged if you can't do it immediately. If you do, you are a freak of nature ;)
no this is more like it, to aim for in RTRT than a crappy sphere
http://www-cache.daz3d.com/sections/galleries/artwork/255/41090.jpg
sure, everyone needs to understand the basics first, and then we will go to the advanced stuff. We will eventually switch to only doing triangles, so that we can work with 3d scenes from 3d graphics. They have standard scenes of triangles you are supposed to run on your raytracer to see how fast yours runs it.