/renderer-cuda

CUDA version of my renderer (real-time raytracing!)

Primary LanguageCGNU General Public License v2.0GPL-2.0

Generated in the renderer's raytracing mode, with reflections and refractions enabled.

Full blog post about this code is here (screenshots, history, etc)

This is a real-time raytracer, supporting .3ds, .ply (ascii) and .tri (binary) formats.

COMPILE/INSTALL/RUN

Under Windows

Make sure you have the CUDA toolkit installed (I used version 3.2). Then:

  1. Open the cudaRenderer_vc90.sln with your Visual Studio
  2. Compile in Release mode
  3. Right-click on "cudaRenderer" in the Solution explorer, and select "Properties"
  4. Click on "Configuration Properties/Debugging"
  5. In the "Command Arguments", enter "..\3D-objects\chessboard.tri" and click OK
  6. Hit Ctrl-F5 to run.

You should see a rotating chessboard...

Read below for keyboard control intructions, or just press 'H' for help.

Note: I used the free Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition, but this should work with the commercial one, too.

Under Linux

The code has 3 dependencies: You must have installed... - OpenGL (with GLEW and GLUT) - libSDL - CUDA toolkit

If you are using Debian, simply...

sudo apt-get install libglew1.5-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev

...and install the CUDA toolkit from NVIDIA (I downloaded version 3.2, and installed it in /opt/cuda-3.2/). After this, a simple...

./configure --with-cuda=/path/to/your/cudaToolkit
make
./src/cudaRenderer 3D-objects/chessboard.tri

...will work.

Keyboard controls

Use the following keys to navigate around the object:

  • Hit 'H' for help.
  • Hit 'R' to stop/start auto-spin (camera rotates around the object).
  • Fly using the cursorKeys/A/Z.
  • Rotate the light with W/Q.
  • S/F are 'strafe' left/right
  • E/D are 'strafe' up/down (strafe keys don't work in auto-spin mode).
  • F4 toggles points mode
  • F5 toggles specular lighting
  • F6 toggles phong normal interpolation
  • F7 toggles reflections
  • F8 toggles shadows
  • F9 toggles anti-aliasing
  • ESC quits.

Misc

Since it reports frame rate at the end, you can use this as a benchmark for CUDA cards. Just spawn with "-b" to request benchmarking: (Note: keys don't work in benchmarking mode)

./src/cudaRenderer -b 150 3D-objects/chessboard.tri

This will draw 150 frames and report speed back. With my GT240, it reports:

Rendering 150 frames in 8.117 seconds. (18.4797 fps)