CUDA Accelerated Raytracer (opens in new tab)

To learn! Everyone should write a ray tracer (or three) on their own before even attempting to dive into a big open source production renderer. An established high profile project isn’t a great place to learn the fundamentals, since those parts are already done, and they don’t necessarily want people contributing who aren’t ready for it or are just there for personal learning purposes. It’s not fair to call it ‘reimplementing’, this project isn’t trying to be Blender. There are loads of other reasons to write a non-Blender renderer aside from learning, including writing one for games or interactive or scientific applications, needing special features, doing research and experimenting with rendering algorithms and data representations, needing a very small/fast/light renderer codebase, etc. etc.

I'm kind of with you, but I suppose its a culture/mind-set thing.

I hate reinventing the wheel, but who knows what kind of innovation could happen by combining unique experiences and lessons someone can learn for future use.

For instance, I made a laser pointer, I could have bought one for $10-$100, but I decided to make my own, learn about Electrical Engineering and optics. I never finished it, but it taught me a ton about EE along the way. Now I am quite comfortable with EE, except the parts I'm uncomfortable about ofc :)

Blender already has CUDA-accelerated raytracing; this is a hobbyist building their own raytracer for the fun of it.

Have you heard of the word "hobby"?

Yes, there are definitely better resources out there. This is just a WIP I had that I thought I’d share.

Indeed, C++20 already, although some stuff is still missing like modules.

Most professional renderers operate in linear floating point space and thus handle hdr with ease.

That was Larrabee whole idea, and AVX is what is left of it.