MiniRT is a minimalist raytracer project developed at 42. It generates realistic 3D images from scenes described in text files, using acceleration techniques like BVH and multi-threading.

• Supported primitives: sphere, plane, cylinder, cone, cube

• Multiple light sources and ambient lighting

• Different materials with their own color, reflection, transparency and refraction index

• Camera with movements (translation, rotation, zoom)

• Acceleration structure (Bounding Volume Hierarchy with Surface Area Heuristic)

• Dynamic multi-threading (thread pool && block-based rendering)

• Parsing of complex scenes (.rt files)

• Shadows, reflections, refractions

• Using 42 MiniLibX for graphical display && events management

• Profiling

• Currently working on textures (chessboard && bump maps)

1. Clone the project:

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/<your_user>/42_Mini_RT.git
   cd 42_Mini_RT

2. Install system dependencies (Ubuntu):

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y build-essential libx11-dev libxext-dev libxpm-dev libxrandr-dev libbsd-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev x11-apps git make

3. Compile MiniLibX (if not done automatically):

   make -C minilibx-linux

4. Compile the project:

   make

5. In case you have a submodule problem:

   git submodule update --init --recursive

6. Or want the latest versions of submodules:

   git submodule update --remote --merge

7. Run with docker image:

   docker build -t minirt42 .
   
   xhost +local:docker
   
   docker run -it --rm \
   -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
   -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
   minirt42

Run the raytracer with a scene:

./miniRT scenes/test.rt

We use multithreading for the redering. It is possible to define the NUM_THREAD variable at compile time. One further improvment of our project would be to detect the number of cores && available threads and set this limit dynamically.

Keyboard/mouse controls (examples):

• WASD / arrow keys: move the camera
• Mouse wheel: zoom in/out
• ESC: quit

We're currently working on implementing different movements for WASD && arrow keys to improve UI. Also, we might implement controller support.

Scene files (.rt) describe objects, camera, and lights. Example:

A 0.2 255,255,255
C 0,0,0 0,0,1 70
L 0,10,0 0.7 255,255,255
pl 0,-5,0 0,1,0 100,100,100
sp 0,0,10 5 255,0,0
cy 10,0,10 0,1,0 2 8 0,255,0

One further improvment would be to support triangle, because the dragon && wolf scenes looked dope on the repo where we foudn them.

To compile with profiling support:

make profile

After running, get a quick performance recap && analyze the results:

make analyze

Or the following command to get a full profiling log:

gprof miniRT gmon.out > profiling.log

• The project uses MiniLibX as a git submodule.
• For graphical display in Docker, see the Dockerfile and documentation.
• For questions or bugs, contact the author.