Ray Tracer

A perspective ray tracer written in C++ that renders scenes with spheres, triangle meshes, reflections, refractions, and procedural textures. Outputs to TIFF.

Originally developed as a course project for CS-636: Advanced Rendering Techniques (May 2012).

Features

• Perspective ray tracing with ray-sphere and ray-triangle mesh intersection
• Diffuse/specular shading (Phong model) with point and directional lights
• Shadows
• Reflective surfaces
• Transparent materials and refractions (Hall shading model)
• 3D rigid transformations (via Instance or at load time)
• Regular grid acceleration structure
• Procedural textures: 3D checker, plane checker, sphere checker
• Anti-aliasing / supersampling: Regular, Jittered, NRooks, MultiJittered, Hammersley, PureRandom, and Adaptive
• Scene definition via text file (scene.txt)
• TIFF output (out.tif)

Requirements

• C++11 compiler (g++ recommended)
• libtiff (development headers)
• libjpeg (development headers)

On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install g++ libtiff-dev libjpeg-dev

Build and Run

make            # build (parallel by default with make -j)
make run        # build and run
make clean      # remove build artifacts and executable
make rebuild    # clean + build

The executable myRaytracer reads scene.txt from the current directory and writes out.tif.

Scene Configuration

scene.txt defines lights, camera, geometry, and materials. See comments at the top of the file for the format specification. Several .smf model files are included in models/.

Example Output

Default scene (1024x1024, adaptive sampling, 69k-triangle bunny, 3 spheres, checker plane):

Benchmarks

Date	OS	Compiler	CPU	RAM	Resolution	Render Time
2026-04-07	Linux Mint 22.3 (kernel 6.17.0)	g++ 13.3.0	Intel Core Ultra X7 358H (16 cores)	64 GB	1024x1024	3.02 s
2024-09-03	Ubuntu 22.04	g++ 11.4.0	Intel Core i5-4200U	8 GB	1024x1024	--
2012-05-30	Windows (ported to Ubuntu 15.04 ~2015)	g++ 4.9.2	Intel Core i5-4200U	8 GB	1024x1024	--

Project Structure

.
├── Makefile              # Build system
├── scene.txt             # Scene definition (input)
├── out.tif / out.png     # Rendered output
├── models/               # 3D models (.smf format)
│   ├── bunny_69k.smf
│   ├── cube.smf
│   └── ...
└── raytracer/            # Source code
    ├── myRaytracer.cpp   # Entry point
    ├── BRDFs/            # Bidirectional reflectance distribution functions
    ├── BTDFs/            # Bidirectional transmittance distribution functions
    ├── Cameras/          # Camera implementations (Pinhole)
    ├── GeometricObjects/ # Primitives, triangles, compound objects
    ├── Lights/           # Ambient, directional, point lights
    ├── Mappings/         # Texture mappings
    ├── Materials/        # Matte, reflective, transparent, spatially-varying
    ├── Samplers/         # Anti-aliasing sample patterns
    ├── Textures/         # Procedural textures (checkers)
    ├── Tracers/          # Ray cast and recursive tracers
    ├── Utilities/        # Math, color, mesh, timer, etc.
    └── World/            # Scene container and view plane

History

• May 2012 -- Created for CS-636 on Windows
• ~2015 -- Ported to Linux (Ubuntu 15.04, g++ 4.9.2)
• Sep 2024 -- Updated for Ubuntu 22.04 (g++ 11.4.0)
• Apr 2026 -- Replaced run.sh with Makefile; rebuilt on Linux Mint 22.3 (g++ 13.3.0, kernel 6.17.0)

Author

Zach Liu

Additional Models

More .smf mesh models: https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~david/Classes/CS586/Models/