raytracer

A ray tracing renderer I wrote from scratch using C++

Features:

Anti aliasing

Depth of Field

Smooth Shadows

Diffuse Shading

Additional Features

• Custom Scene Description Language

  • Simple tokenizer/parser
  • Declarative syntax for scene setup
  • Supports camera, lights, materials, and primitives
  • Easy to extend with new object types

• Software Architecture

  • Singleton pattern for global systems
  • Factory pattern for material and primitive creation
  • Separation of concerns between rendering, tracing, and scene management

Building the Project

Create and enter the build directory:

mkdir build

cd build

Generate build files with CMake:

cmake ..

Build the project:

cmake --build .

Run the raytracer:

./raytracer

This will generate a render.raw file in the build directory.

Viewing the Output

The raytracer outputs raw RGB data that needs to be converted for viewing. I created a Python script called raw_visualizer.py in the tools folder in the project root

To view the rendered image make sure you have python3 installed and then run the script: From the build folder:

python3 ../tools/raw_visualizer.py

Requirements

CMake 3.10 or higher C++ compiler (gcc, clang, or msvc) Python 3.x with PIL and numpy packages (only for the raw_visualizer.py script)