miniRT - Ray Tracing Engine

3D ray tracer built in C with multi-threading support for parallel rendering.

What I Built

• Ray Tracing Engine: Renders 3D scenes by casting rays from camera through pixels
• Multi-Threading: Added pthread support to render different image rows in parallel
• Multiple Shapes: Spheres, planes, cylinders, cones, triangles
• Phong Lighting: Ambient, diffuse, and specular lighting with shadows
• Reflections: Recursive ray casting for reflective surfaces

Gallery

Here are some examples of scenes rendered with miniRT:

A classic teapot scene.

A more complex model, showcasing triangle mesh rendering.

The Cornell Box, a standard test for ray tracers.

A scene demonstrating all supported geometric primitives.

A colorful scene with multiple spheres and reflections.

A planetary scene with lighting and shadows.

An abstract representation of an atom.

A room scene with a bright light source.

The same room scene with a dimmer, more atmospheric lighting.

A majestic dragon, showcasing complex model rendering.

Installation

Prerequisites

• GCC or Clang compiler
• GNU Make
• X11 development libraries (Linux)
• MLX library

Build

git clone --recursive [email protected]:tham-le/miniRT.git
cd miniRT
make

Technical Implementation

// Multi-threaded rendering structure
typedef struct s_thread_data {
    t_data *data;
    int    start_row;
    int    end_row;
    int    thread_id;
} t_thread_data;

// Optimized vector normalization
void fast_normalize_vec(t_vector *vec) {
    double mag_sq = vec_magnitude_squared(vec);
    if (mag_sq == 0) return;
    double inv_mag = 1.0 / sqrt(mag_sq);
    scale_vec(vec, vec, inv_mag);
}

Usage

./miniRT scenes/one_sphere.rt

Scene Format

A  0.2        255,255,255    # Ambient lighting
C  0,0,-5  0,0,1  70         # Camera
L  -40,50,0  0.8  255,255,255 # Light
sp 0,0,0   2      255,0,0    # Sphere

Skills Used

• C Programming (8,000+ lines)
• Multi-threading (pthreads)
• 3D Mathematics (vectors, matrices, ray-object intersections)
• Graphics Programming (ray tracing algorithms)
• Memory Management (efficient data structures)