GLSL Ray Tracer

This is a small personal project where I explore ray tracing directly in a GLSL fragment shader. The C++ side is intentionally minimal: it just creates an OpenGL window, feeds camera/light data to the shader, and accumulates frames to help denoise.

Features

• GLSL ray tracer with spheres, a ground plane, and basic materials
• Accumulation-based denoising when the camera is still
• ImGui controls for camera FOV, sun/sky lighting, and accumulation behavior
• First-person fly camera (mouse + WASD + Space/Shift)
• Cross platform (macOS, Linux, Windows)
• Simple CMake build

Requirements

• CMake 3.28+
• C++17 compatible compiler
• OpenGL 4.1 core profile (macOS) or 3.3+ elsewhere

Clone and Run Locally

This repo uses submodules for GLFW and ImGui, so make sure you clone with --recursive:

git clone https://github.com/ypatel2022/ray-tracer-glsl --recursive

Build and Run

macOS / Linux

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .
./raytracer

Windows (MinGW)

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" ..
cmake --build .
./raytracer.exe

Controls

• W/A/S/D move
• Space / Left Shift up / down
• Mouse look (capture with Tab, release with Tab)
• Esc quit