miniRT

miniRT is a minimalistic Ray Tracer project developed in C, aimed at rendering basic 3D scenes. It follows the specifications for the 42 School's miniRT project, focusing on the implementation of simple ray tracing techniques to render scenes with geometric shapes, lights, and camera controls.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
• Usage
  • Running the Program
  • Controls
  • Scene Files
• Supported Objects and Effects
• Roadmap
• License

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Features

• Real-time Ray Tracing: Render 3D scenes with ray tracing, a technique that simulates light as rays, allowing for realistic reflections, refractions, and shadows.
• Geometric Shapes: Support for rendering spheres, planes, and cylinders (triangle in the bonus).
• Lighting: Implements lighting and shading.
• Camera Controls: Configure camera position and orientation within the scene.
• Minimalistic Design: Efficient and lightweight implementation in C for low-level system performance.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before running miniRT, ensure you have the following:

• A Unix-like operating system (Linux or macOS)
• gcc (GNU Compiler Collection)
• make
• X11 libraries (libx11 and libxext) for window handling on Linux

To install X11 libraries on Linux (if not installed):

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxext-dev

Installation

1. Clone the Repository:

   git clone https://github.com/Norias1011/miniRT.git
   cd miniRT

2. Build the Project:

   Use make to compile the project:

   make

   After make to compile, use make bonus to compile the bonus:

   make bonus

3. Run the Ray Tracer:

   After compilation, you can run the program with a scene file (provided or custom).

   ./miniRT scenes/example.rt

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Usage

Running the Program

To run miniRT, provide it with a scene description file (.rt extension). Example scene files are located in the scenes directory.

./miniRT scenes/sample.rt

Controls

• ESC: Exit the program
• Keyboard: WASD and c,SPACE to go up and down. + and - to zoom in the scene (controls available only in the bonus part)

Scene Files

Scene files describe the objects, lights, and camera in the scene. They use a simple, human-readable format. Below is an example of a scene file:

# Example scene file
A 0.2 255,255,255       # Ambient light
C 0,0,-5 0,0,1 70       # Camera
L 5,5,-10 0.8 255,255,255 # Light

sp 0,0,20 5 255,0,0     # Sphere (center_x, center_y, center_z) (radius) (R,G,B)
pl 0,1,0 0,-1,0 0,255,0 # Plane (center_x, center_y, center_z) (3D vector orientation from -1.0 to 1.0) (R,G,B)
cy 0,0,10 0,0,1 1 5 255,255,0  # Cylinder (center_x, center_y, center_z) (3D vector orientation from -1.0 to 1.0) (cylinder diameter) (cylinder height) (R,G,B)
tr 20,15,14 23,75,89 36,45,75 255,0,255 # Triangle (Point A) (Point B) (Point C) (R,G,B) Only in bonus

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Supported Objects and Effects

Geometric Objects

• Spheres (sp)
• Planes (pl)
• Cylinders (cy)
• Triangles (tr) only for the bonus part

Lighting

• Ambient Light (A)
• Point Light (L)

Camera

• Define camera position, orientation, and field of view (FOV) using the C identifier in scene files.

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Roadmap

Planned features for future releases:

• Additional Shapes: Support for more complex shapes like cones and triangles.
• Texture Mapping: Add support for applying textures to surfaces.
• Reflection and Refraction: Implement advanced light effects such as mirrors and transparent objects.
• Multithreading: Optimize rendering speed by leveraging multi-core processors.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

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Thank you for checking out miniRT! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or suggestions.