Awesome

Software Renderer

<img src="assets/helmet/screenshot2.png" width="410"> <img src="assets/helmet/screenshot3.png" width="410"> <img src="assets/drone/screenshot1.gif" width="410"> <img src="assets/drone/screenshot2.gif" width="410">

This is a shader-based software renderer written from scratch in C89 with minimal dependencies, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Features

• Cross platform
• Minimal dependencies
• Shader based
• Homogeneous clipping
• Back-face culling
• Perspective correct interpolation
• Depth testing
• Alpha testing
• Alpha blending
• Cubemapped skybox
• Skeletal animation
• Tangent space normal mapping
• Shadow mapping
• ACES tone mapping
• Blinn–Phong reflection model
• Physically based rendering (PBR)
• Metallic-roughness workflow
• Specular-glossiness workflow
• Image-based lighting (IBL)
• Orbital camera controls
• PBR material inspector

Download

Pre-built binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux are available for download from the Releases page.

Build

To build the software renderer from source, a C89 compiler and development files for your window system are required.

Windows

Install Visual Studio with C++ support and run build_win32.bat.

macOS

Install Command Line Tools for Xcode with the command below and run build_macos.sh.

xcode-select --install

Linux

Install GCC and Xlib with the following commands and run build_linux.sh.

Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt install gcc libx11-dev

Fedora / RHEL

sudo dnf install gcc libX11-devel

openSUSE / SUSE

sudo zypper install gcc libX11-devel

Bonus

A CMakeLists.txt file is provided for generating project files using CMake (see examples below).

Visual Studio

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" ..
start Renderer.sln

Xcode

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G Xcode ..
open Renderer.xcodeproj

Makefile

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
make

Usage

Launch

If the software renderer is launched without arguments, one of the available scenes will be chosen randomly. To display a specific scene (see below), additional arguments should be supplied. The command line syntax is:

Viewer [test_name [scene_name]]

Controls

• Orbit: left mouse button
• Pan: right mouse button
• Zoom: mouse wheel
• Rotate lighting: <kbd>A</kbd> <kbd>D</kbd> <kbd>S</kbd> <kbd>W</kbd>
• Reset everything: <kbd>Space</kbd>

Inspector

For PBR scenes, a material inspector that is very similar to the layers view of Marmoset Viewer is provided. Double click to bring it up.

Screenshots

References

Rendering pipeline

• Tiny Renderer
• OpenGL ES 2.0 Specification

Physically based rendering

• glTF 2.0 Sample Viewer
• SIGGRAPH 2013 Shading Course
• Physically Based Rendering in Filament

File formats

• Truevision TGA
• Radiance HDR
• Wavefront OBJ
• Khronos glTF

Miscellaneous

• Homogeneous clipping
• Barycentric coordinates
• Perspective correct interpolation
• Skeletal animation
• Tangent space normal mapping
• Ambient occlusion
• ACES tone mapping
• Orbital camera controls
• Xlib programming guide
• Type-safe dynamic array

License

MIT License