Bipul Mohanto

Bipul Mohanto

Doctoral Researcher@ Foveated Rendering | 3D Graphics Rendering| Global Illumination | Multi-View Rendering | Applied Human Perception | Color Science | Computer Vision

Ray-Based Rendering Learning Resources

3 minute read

Published:

(work in progress…)

I titled this post as ray-based learning resources, which actually not exactly focus on the Whitted-style ray tracing or Cook-style recursive ray tracing algorithm. These resources agnostic and works for the common ray-based rendering categories. The ray casting is also the earlier version of this category which has very limited applications nowadays. Contrarily, the global illumination (aka. Physically-Based Rendering, indirect illumination rendering) is the advanced branch of the ray-based rendering which generates physically-accurate light simulation under virtual environments. The Path tracing is one of the most popular algorithms under this categories. It is mainly a discrete light simulation that approximately imitates the continuous real-world light interaction using the approximate physics and calculus algorithm. There are hundreds of algorithms under global illumination categories. Other than path tracing, the photon mapping, Metropolis light transport, Radiosity, Ambient Occlusion, Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination (DDGI), etc. are also very popular. However, each of the algorithms has their advantages and limitations. Therefore, in the professional-grade rendering engine, often hybrid approaches are used that combines multiple global illumination algorithms based on their superiority photorealistic effects.

The primary goal of this blog is to gather available resources that may assist the newbies. The experts might find this redundant. Before further go, I will strongly recommend to explore the Real-Time Rendering Resources webpage which has been build over a long time and literally contains the best resources available in the internet.

Other than that, here is a lit of books that I found interesting to add in the learning process. The sequence is based on my personal choice. Some of the resources are free:

  1. Ray Tracing Gems Series
  2. Scratchapixel 👍🏼 👍🏽 Blog style
  3. Physically Based Rendering Book Online 👍🏼 👍🏼 Must Read
  4. The Graphics Codex 👍🏽 👍🏼
  5. Ray Tracing in One Weekend Series
  6. GPU Gems Series

Besides, if you are new to Rendering domain, you can follow:

  1. book Fundamentals of Computer Graphics (the latest version)
  2. Learn OpenGL, Must Read blog-style

3D Model Archives

  1. ORCA: Open Research Content Archive
  2. McGuire Computer Graphics Archive 👍🏼
  3. Benedikt Bitterli’s Rendering Resources 👍🏼
  4. Stanford 3D Scanning Repository
  5. Clara.io
  6. HDRI light texture
    1. polygon heaven
    2. hdri heaven
  7. From GitHub
    1. Commonly used Scenes and Assets
    2. few good 3D models
    3. ray tracing references

Computer Graphics YouTube Lecture Series Lectures:

  1. Cem Yuksel’s Lecture Series
  2. Justin Solmon’s Lecture
  3. Computer Graphics at TU Wien
  4. Ravi Ramamoorthi’s Lecture
  5. Keenan Crane’s Lecture
  6. Wolfgang Huerst’s Lecture Series
  7. Rajesh Sharma SIGGRAPH 2021 ***

Developer’s Forums

Blogs Path Tracing

Ray Tracing on Weekend (RTOW) series

  1. Pixar RenderMan
  2. V-Ray
  3. Cycles-Blender, with Blender, use OptiX backend
  4. Autodesk Arnold, OptiX in backend
  5. The G3D Innovation Engine, OptiX backend
  6. NVidia IRay, OptiX backend
  7. Luxrender, OptiX back end
  8. Houdini, OptiX backend
  9. openmoonray, Embree

For research

  1. Mitsuba 3 Physically Based Renderer

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tauray

2 minute read

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At the time of writing this (October, 2025), there are limited publicly available rendering engine that works for real-time stereo path tracing. The slow convergence with pixel dense display in VR is limiting real-time stereo path tracer. However, with the RT-core and GPU architecture improvements, I am noticing the recent trend of physically accurate light simulation in real-time rendering, e.g., games. Therefore, definitely with time, the real-time stereo path-tracing (and with other advanced global illumination algorithms) would be a real thing once we will overcome frame-rate constraint. Physically-accurate light simulation will minimized the difference between real and virtual world and extend the path of true immersion. Currently, 90 fps has become a golden standard for VR. However, the higher is the better for immersion.

Tamashii Beginner Tutorial

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Tamashii is an excellent scientific rendering framework under development by the Department of Computer Graphics, TU Wien. Its main goal is to simplify the creation of research applications in the field of computer graphics by providing a fundamental structure in the form of libraries implementing resource loading, input handling, user interface creation, a complete rendering framework, and graphics API abstraction. The backend graphics API is Vulkan. However, Tamashii only supports single display systems, and \textbf{has not been modified for VR.}

Popular 3D Graphics APIs

less than 1 minute read

Published:

High-level API

  1. OpenGL
    1. OpenGL loaders (creates function specification only)
      1. GLUT
      2. FreeGLUT (recommended by Prof. Yuksel)
      3. Glad
      4. GLEW (widely used)
      5. Other
    2. OpenGL Windowing APIs for OpenGL are below:
      1. GLFW: OWL already have it in 3rdParty Library
      2. Qt

        Low level APIs are (Ref.)

  2. Microsoft DirectX 11, 12, DXR
    1. NVidia Falcor (DXR-based)
  3. Vulkan Raytracing (VKR)
  4. NVidia OptiX
    1. Project-OWL
    2. shocker-0x15
  5. Metal (MacOS)