A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia
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
In plain words
A physically-based GPU ray tracer that ports pbrt-v4 to Julia and integrates with the Makie plotting backend. It enables photorealistic rendering of any Makie visualization through path tracing. Users can extend the tracer with custom materials and physics by writing Julia code, which compiles directly to GPU kernels; complex effects like gravitational lensing require minimal code. The tool runs on AMD, NVIDIA, and CPU hardware via KernelAbstractions.jl, with Metal support planned. It targets graphics programmers and researchers working with Julia.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
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