miniRT

A lightweight 3D ray-tracing project built in C, designed to render simple scenes from configuration files and explore the fundamentals of computer graphics.

Overview

miniRT is a project focused on real-time and offline rendering techniques, with a scene parser, camera model, geometric primitives, and lighting calculations. It reads a .rt scene description, builds the corresponding 3D environment, and renders a final image using ray-casting and shading logic.

This project demonstrates core graphics concepts such as:

• geometric intersection math
• camera-to-world transformations
• light and shadow handling
• scene parsing and validation
• image generation for both display and exported output

Features

• Parses scene files in .rt format
• Supports multiple basic 3D objects, including spheres, planes, cylinders, squares, and triangles
• Includes camera and lighting configuration
• Implements shading and visibility calculations for rendered objects
• Renders directly in a window with support for interactive viewing adjustments
• Exports rendered frames as BMP files
• Built with a custom C library and miniLibX integration

Project Structure

• src/: rendering, parsing, validation, and event logic
• Includes/: project headers and shared declarations
• libft/: custom utility library
• minilibx-linux/: windowing and image handling
• scenes/: example configuration files for testing and demonstration

Build

From the project root:

make

This compiles the project and produces the miniRT executable.

Run

Open a scene file:

./miniRT scenes/subject.rt

Render and save a BMP output:

./miniRT scenes/basic_shapes/sphere_origin.rt --save

Example Scenes

The repository includes sample files for a range of setups, including:

• basic geometry tests
• lighting and brightness variations
• camera and transformation examples
• multi-object compositions

Notes

This project was developed as a graphics-focused implementation exercise and emphasizes clean scene parsing, mathematical rendering logic, and image generation from a custom scene description format.

License

This project is intended for educational and portfolio use.