This is a simple raytracer that uses my own math vector class. It doesn't use OpenGL or any fancy libraries---everything is from scratch. I wrote this and reinvented the wheel a bit to practice C++ and realize a longstanding nerdy dream to write a raytracer. Spheres, planes, cylinders, point lights, spotlights, area lights, reflections, and shadows are supported. Check out this sample render.

See example.dat in the root directoy for a demonstration of the scene description language that is used to specify the scenes. If you modify this file you can render the new scene by typing make view. Make sure you have Eye of Gnome and the Boost libraries installed. On Ubuntu you can install them by apt-getting eog and libboost-all-dev.

If you want more control over image dimensions, the file format, and so forth type ./rt and read the output for instructions. I recommend running the raytracer like ./rt <width> <height> -s < example.dat | display -. All comments are written so that doxygen can generate documentation from the source; just type make docs to build it into the doc folder. There are some LaTeX formulas in the docs to help with comprehension of the math.

The Google test libraries needed for unit testing are included in this repository and are automatically built by the makefile. There is fairly good unit test coverage; look at some of the test suites to familiarize yourself with the provided classes.