RT: Ray Tracing Engine

A ray tracing engine written from scratch in C++, with no external dependencies (except libpng). The first priority of this project has been to write readable code, so that it can be used as a learning tool.

Some sample renders

Implemented Features

Geometry:

• Arbitrary object transformations
• Wavefront OBJ parser
• Two level Bounded Volume Hierarchies
• Implicit surfaces through Ray Marching
• Signed Distance Function intersections
• Parametric Surfaces (Paraboloids, etc)*
• Surfaces of revolution*
• Beveled curves and knots*
• Displacement mapped planes / spheres*
• Basic L-Systems

* Converted to meshes

Shading:

• Ambient Occlusion
• Path tracing with next event estimation
• Direct Lighting

Materials (Path tracing):

• Specular reflection
• Specular transmission
• Lambertian
• Oren Nayar
• Sampled BRDFs (MERL)

Misc:

• Procedurally generated textures
• Depth of Field
• Environment Maps
• Volumetric surfaces

Some meshes from the following resource have been tested successfully: McGuire Computer Graphics Archive.

Currently the engine only supports PNG/PPM/BMP3 files, so if the textures included with the .obj file is in a different format, then use the provided script ./scripts/convert_images.sh