MiniLight is a command-line minimal global illumination renderer. It reads a simple text model file and writes a PPM image file.
It is primarily an exercise in simplicity. But that makes it a good base and benchmark (in some sense) for development and experimentation. And it just might be the neatest renderer around (on average, about 650 lines). There are translations into several programming languages.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Monte-carlo path-tracing transport. This strategy is essentially a blind search for light emitters.
- Emitter sampling. The location of all emitters is known from the model, and this can be used.
- Progressive refinement.
- RGB light.
- Diffuse materials.
- Triangle modelling primitives.
- Octree spatial index.
- Pin-hole ‘lens’.
- Ward linear tone-mapping.
Website: www.hxa.name/minilight
Support:
Developer: Harrison Ainsworth
License: CC0 1.0 Universal
MiniLight is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Renderers | |
|---|---|
| Blender | 3D computer graphics software toolset that excels in many areas |
| Cycles | Physically based production renderer developed by the Blender project |
| Mitsuba | Extensible rendering framework written in portable C++ |
| LuxCoreRender | Physically based and unbiased rendering engine |
| MoonRay | Production path-tracing renderer |
| pbrt | Physically based ray tracing system |
| Malt | Fully customizable real-time rendering framework |
| Art of Illusion | 3D-modeler, renderer and raytracer |
| appleseed | Physically-based renderer targeted at production rendering |
| Renderer | Interactive 3D visualization of triangle meshes |
| Radiance | Suite of tools for performing lighting simulation |
| MiniLight | Minimal global illumination renderer |
| MantaRay | Advanced renderer which uses modern rendering techniques |
| Aqsis | 3D rendering solution adhering to the RenderMan standard |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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