An optimized implementation of Peter Shirley’s classic ray tracing (actually path tracing) series: Ray Tracing in One Weekend and Ray Tracing: The Next Week. This version is written in C++17, enhanced with SIMD intrinsics and OpenMP multithreading for better performance.
Peter Shirley’s originals were intentionally C-style. This project reimagines them with modern C++ practices and performance optimizations.
Some features added:
- A 3D model importer.
- Generic vector class: implemented a generic N-dimensional vector class.
- Image Writer: Instead of relying on a PPM writer, which is very slow and produces very large files, I implemented an image writer using stb_image_write. It supports multiple output formats, including PPM, PNG, JPEG, BMP, and TGA.
- Multithreading: Initially, I implemented a custom thread pool, but later transitioned to OpenMP for simplicity and better performance (skill issue on my part).
- Tile-based rendering: The image is divided into tiles for more efficient parallel rendering.
- CPU SIMD intrinsics: Used for optimized vector operations and improved performance.
- C++17 (GCC >= 9, Clang >= 10, or MSVC >= 2019)
- CMake
- OpenMP support
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/hilbertcube/SIMD-Pathtracer.git
cd SIMD-Pathtracer
# Create a build directory
mkdir build && cd build
# Configure the project
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
# Build the project
cmake --build .After building, you’ll find the executable inside the build/ directory:
./SIMD-PathtracerBy default, it renders the final scene and saves it to output.png (or another format if specified).
To enable SIMD, simply add #define _USE_SIMD_ before #include "vector.hpp", but remember to do this only once, or else just use #ifndef.
- CUDA acceleration
- Command line arguments