CRayTracer

Semi-real-time Ray tracer written in C++, only using base C libraries and Win32API for displaying to screen and keyboard input

Features

• adding spheres to the scene
  • give location in 3d space
  • radius
  • material
• 3 different materials for spheres
  • matte
  • metal
  • glass
• moveable camera using keyboard inputs
• render in low-quality mode or high-quality mode

How to run

• ENV = Windows
• Compiler = g++ on msys2 MINGW64
• run make
• ./renderer

Controls

• space = re-render
• d move camera x position by 1
• a move camera x position by -1
• w move camera y lookat by 1
• s move camera y lookat by -1
• e move camera x lookat by 1
• q move camera x lookat by -1
• arrow up move camera y position by 1
• arrow down move camera y position by -1
• right arrow activates high graphics mode
• left arrow activates low graphics mode

*note after moving the camera position or changing mode press the space bar to re-render the image with the new settings

Current design:

• camera casts ray on each pixel in the viewport

• ray is checked to see if it has made contact with any objects

• color of the pixel is determined based on the normal vector of the ray and object

• if no object is hit the color of the pixel is based on the background

Future additions

• adding Quads instead of only spheres
• improving/optimizing the speed of rendering
  • Bounding Volume Hierarchies
  • Multithreaded rendering
  • GPU hardware acceleration using OpenCL
• Light sources
• Code documentation

Settings

Camera

• FOV
• Starting position

Image

• width
• aspect ratio
• pixel sample size

*note (higher value for width and pixel sample size = higher quality image but also slower rendering time)

Showcase

Pre-rendered image

Pre-rendered image after moving the camera

Rendered image with pixel sample size of 100