Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to An easy-to-use ray-tracer written from scratch in C++
A ray-tracer with a simple scene description language for easily generating beautiful images. - diegomacario/Super-Sunshine
This is a ray-tracing application built from the ground up in C++. It's designed for people interested in computer graphics and rendering who want to understand or experiment with ray-tracing techniques. The project is… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. An easy-to-use ray-tracer written from scratch in C++ launched in 2017; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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A ray-tracer with a simple scene description language for easily generating beautiful images. - diegomacario/Super-Sunshine
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
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C++ Path Tracer from scratch with zero third-party libraries. - themartiano/luz
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Monte Carlo ray tracer developed using Rust. Contribute to Dalamar42/rayt development by creating an account on GitHub.
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
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I’ve been experimenting with Rust lately and wanted a project that would help me explore some of its lower-level and performance-oriented features. Inspired by Sebastian Lague’s videos, I decided to implement my own ray tracer from scratch. The initial goal was just to render a simple 3D scene in the browser at a reasonable frame rate. It evolved into a small renderer that can: • Run locally or on the web using wgpu and WebAssembly • Perform mesh rendering with a Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) for acceleration • Simulate both direct and indirect illumination for photorealistic results • Be…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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We ported pbrt-v4 to Julia and built it into a Makie backend. Any Makie plot can now be rendered with physically-based path tracing. Julia compiles user-defined physics directly into GPU kernels, so anyone can extend the ray tracer with new materials and media - a black hole with gravitational lensing is ~200 lines of Julia. Runs on AMD, NVIDIA, and CPU via KernelAbstractions.jl, with Metal coming soon. Demo scenes: github.com/SimonDanisch/RayDemo
Feb 2026 · makie.org · its alternatives →
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This is a GPU "software" raytracer (i.e. using manual ray-scene intersections and not RTX) written using the WebGPU API that renders glTF scenes. It supports many materials, textures, material & normal mapping, and heavily relies on multiple importance sampling to speed up convergence.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A toy ray tracer in Rust. Contribute to Twinklebear/tray_rust development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Been making this rasterizer engine in C++ for the past few months, now also adding ray-tracing functionality to the system. Simply load a model or generate a mesh, add some lights, and render.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10AR
2018 · tylermw.com · its alternatives →
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A path tracer written in Go. Contribute to fogleman/pt development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
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GPU Raytracer from scratch in C++/CUDA. Contribute to jan-van-bergen/GPU-Raytracer development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
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RayThis▲178Generate pretty code snippets right out of VSCode
2021 · marketplace.visualstudio.com · its alternatives →
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2018 · ultralig.ht · its alternatives →
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An introduction to non-line-of-sight imaging, and how to create images of hidden objects around a corner in under 10 minutes!
2019 · analytech-solutions.com · its alternatives →
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A simple ray tracer. . Contribute to LanJian/godray development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Since this is a major new release (three and a half years in development), I think this should be ok for Show HN. This release has lots of new material, fixes, and updates across the three books in this series. All three books are online and free, with accompanying code available from GitHub. Enjoy!
2024 · raytracing.github.io · its alternatives →
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I'm the co-creator and maintainer of https://aframe.io/ and long time Web 3D graphics dev. Super excited about new techniques to author / render / represent 3D. Spark is a an open source library to easily integrate Gaussian splats in your THREE.js scene I worked with some friends and I hope you find useful. Looking forward to hearing what features / rendering techniques you would love to see next.
2025 · sparkjs.dev · its alternatives →
- 19IM
I was fascinated by this [0] and this video [1]. After many struggles, I finally built this app that traces images using circles similar to what these videos had shown. The most challenging part (to me) is to find a way to convert images to vector lines. I had tried Potrace, but its output is not suitable for my use case: too many small elements share the same border. Potrace's goal is to represent the original image faithfully using vector lines. But I want to trace the image edges. After searching and trying some Potrace alternatives in vain, I finally found my keyword. Surprisingly (to…
2022 · phqb.github.io · its alternatives →
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All sorts of POV-Ray related stuff by Michael Scharrer indluding a collection of scenes and scc5 re-renderings. Free source code is included for all items.
2015 · mscharrer.net · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Create beautiful moving gradients on Framer and Figma
2023 · shadergradient.co · its alternatives →
- 23MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
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How can you make affine transformations (the only ones SVGs are capable of) resemble perspective transformations?
2025 · seve.blog · its alternatives →
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- I wrote a C++ ray tracer from scratch without AI alternatives
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- A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia alternatives
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →