Show HN: I wrote a C++ ray tracer from scratch without AI

_" Btw this was initially coded without AI, but I've used it for the recent clean up and features. "_

???

Hey HN,

5 years ago I was 17 and learning to code C/C++ in a coding bootcamp (42). One of the projects was a simple C ray tracer. I really enjoyed working on the project and always loved computer graphics, so I decided to create my own path tracer from scratch, in C++, without using any third-party libraries.

I ended up working on it consistently for over a year, then sporadically when CG excitement hit me again. Recently I polished it and completed some unfinished features and decided to make it public, finally. It's a C++20 Path Tracer with a CPU renderer. It is able to render good-looking images with reasonable performance and sample count.

Btw this was initially coded without AI, but I've used it for the recent clean up and features. This project is a personal favorite of mine, and it can improve a lot, so I'd love to hear your feedback.

This is (or at least used to be) a right of passage in the graphics world.

I think many people go through the very popular https://raytracing.github.io/

There was a big influx of this when Sebastian Lague did his video series on building a ray tracer.

Ray tracing is one of those problems that is conceptually so simple, yet continues to take so much mindshare because of all the challenges to implementation.

Me too, but in TS/WebGPU: https://github.com/ivanjermakov/moonlight

Very fun! Packing data for GPU-side BVH was quite tricky.

"Without AI" is the new "Written in Rust", SCNR

for anybody else interested in this undertaking, I recommend this book https://pragprog.com/titles/jbtracer/the-ray-tracer-challeng...

A C++ ray tracer from scratch was the course project for my computer graphics class in 2016. I enjoyed the exercise immensely. Not nearly as robust as yours of course.

> without AI

Now this is how you catch attention

Have you considered rewriting it in Rust? Not for any technical reason (I say it reflexively now)

HN ongoing support and disdain for AI is perplexing.

Great work on such a technically challenging project.

yup. me too. once upon a time that was a 2 week assignment in graphics class in college

I think these kind of projects fail to impress these days, with or without AI.

You need a second order effect, like “I did X using this thing I built Y”, where X is the actual impressive part and the Y is just an implementation detail. Maybe like that Roman Empire Names thing.

Nice, I once built a ray tracer without using an SQL database.

Very cool!

for the love of the game, very refreshing good ol' coding

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