pathtracer

This is a path tracer which renders images via monte carlo integration over light paths. The code is built out of two pieces, JS and GLSL. JS runs the PathTracer class, which manages keyboard controls and uniforms, for a full screen shader with three stages: tracing the scene (one pass), accumulation (the monte carlo integration) and display ( outputting the result to the screen)

GLSL contains the code for these three independent shaders. Each are eventually imported into JS as strings, by the magic of the bundler VITE

To Render a Scene THIS IS A REBUILD OF THE ORIGINAL VERSION: Scenes are built by adding a new folder to “scenes”, which must contain an index.html, main.js and vite.config The scene is built by running vite build from this folder, which produces a folder dist/ inside of it containing the finished code

The details of the scene are stored in scene/src: this must include lights.glsl objects.glsl walls.glsl and settings.js You may include other glsl files needed to define the objects used in lights/objects/walls, or you can use ‘default’ objects specified in the overall program. If you need other glsl files, import them at the top of lights/objects/walls as needed. Lights/objects/walls are imported into the construction of ‘tracer’, the main pathtracing program

and declaring files lights.glsl objects.glsl walls.glsl (which all import into a placeholder file _scene.glsl) and settings.js. The glsl files hold the data for lights, walls and objects respectively. They will be inserted into the tracer shader after 4Objects and before 6Trace, so can use any functions defined in sections 4 and above. Settings is formatted as the output of “Download Settings” from the pathtracer UI.

Once a scene has been written, to actually run it in the pathtracer you need to tell the program where the scene lives in TWO SEPARATE PLACES (sorry :/) one for JS and one for GLSL. The two places are at the root of the scenes directory, sceneSettings.js and sceneShader.glsl.