This is a real-time ray tracing renderer implemented in pure JavaScript, supporting movable camera perspectives, dynamic scenes, and basic reflection effects. View Demo
- Real-time Ray Tracing: Implements realistic lighting and reflection effects using ray tracing algorithms
- Interactive Camera Control: Supports rotating the view with mouse drag and zooming with the scroll wheel
- Dynamic Scene: Objects can change position over time
- Realistic Reflections: Light rays can bounce multiple times in the scene, creating reflection effects
- Pure Frontend Implementation: No backend server required, runs entirely in the browser
- HTML5 Canvas API: Used for pixel rendering
- Ray Tracing Algorithm: Emits rays from each pixel and calculates intersections with scene objects and reflections
- Vector Mathematics: Handles ray directions, reflections, and intersection calculations in 3D space
- Camera Model: Implements a complete perspective projection camera model
- Animation Loop: Uses
requestAnimationFramefor smooth rendering cycles
- For each pixel, emit a ray from the camera position
- Detect intersections between the ray and scene objects
- Calculate the reflected ray at the intersection point
- Continue tracing the reflected ray for intersections with other objects
- Repeat this process several times, accumulating color values
- Render the final color value to the pixel
- Spherical Coordinate System: Uses horizontal angle (angleY) and vertical angle (angleX) to control camera direction
- Orthogonal Basis: Calculates the camera's three orthogonal vectors (viewX, viewY, viewZ)
- Perspective Projection: Uses field of view (FOV) and aspect ratio to calculate pixel rays
- Mouse Drag: Righ 5862 t-click or Shift+left-click drag to rotate the view
- Mouse Wheel: Adjust camera distance (zoom)
- View Constraints: Prevents the view from flipping
- Clone this repository
- Open
raytracing_camera_move.htmlin your browser - Use right-click drag or Shift+left-click drag to rotate the view
- Use the mouse wheel to adjust zoom
- Ray tracing is computationally intensive and may cause reduced frame rates on low-performance devices
- The current implementation uses basic ray tracing without acceleration structures
- The number of spheres in the scene and reflection iteration count significantly impact performance
- Add more types of geometry (planes, triangles, cubes, etc.)
- Implement more complex materials (refraction, diffusion, subsurface scattering)
- Add area light sources and soft shadows
- Implement depth of field effects
- Use Web Workers or GPU acceleration (WebGL/WebGPU) to improve performance