sunray

Rust hardware ray-tracing library

This project was developed by kalsifer-742 and circled-square supervised by Professor Marco Patrignani for the bachelor thesis at the University of Trento, Italy

Contribution

If you wish to contribute to the project you may check our issues, or if you found a bug or missing feature feel free to create one. You may also contact us at the e-mail addresses linked to our GitHub accounts.

If you're studying at University of Trento and are looking for a thesis subject you can ask Professor Marco Patrignani to be your supervisor to work on this project and we will be available if you need help or clarifications.

Thesis proposals:

• Visual Enhancement #51
• Library Integration #52

Comparison

	Active project	Non-trivial	Real-time	Fully ray-traced	Hybrid	GPU	HW RT	Compute	SIMD	BVH	Mesh	Materials	Denoise	Rust	Crate	Engine	Notes
Kajiya	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	?	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
Cycles	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	N/A	✅ Blender
manta-ray	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	N/A	✅ Blender
luxcore	✅	✅	❌	?	?	✅	❌	✅	?	?	✅	✅	?	❌	N/A	✅ Blender
akari_render	❌	✅	?	?	?	✅	❌	✅	?	?	✅	✅	?	✅	❌	✅ Blender	Rebuild blender to install
KaminariOS/rustracer	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	uses Nix
RayTracingInVulkan	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	?	✅	✅	partial	❌	❌	N/A	❌
referencePT	❌	✅	?	?	?	✅	✅	❌	❌	?	✅	✅	?	❌	N/A	❌
gbrt	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌
Godot4-RayTracing	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	partial	❌	❌	N/A	✅ Godot
Raytracing_Godot4	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	N/A	✅ Godot
bevyray	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	partial	❌	✅	❌	✅ Bevy	raytracing in fragment shader
hanamaru-renderer	❌	❌	❌	?	?	❌	❌	❌	?	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	docs are in japanese
rtwlib	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌
rustic-zen	❌	❌	✅	?	?	❌	❌	❌	?	?	?	?	?	✅	✅	❌	2D
andros21/rustracer	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌
sunray	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅	partial	❌	✅	✅	❌

Resources

General

• Nvidia tutorial on vulkan KHR raytracing
• SaschaWillems basic ray tracing tutorial (C++)
• SaschaWillems vulkan tutorials (C++)
• Khronos vulkan samples (C++)
• Ray Tracing in One Weekend - series

• Other projects

  • hatoo/ash-raytracing-example (Rust)
  • adrien-ben/vulkan-examples-rs (Rust)

Rendering

• Ray Tracing Gems II
• pbrt
  • book
• PBR for materials
  • page 197 - appendix B: BRDF Implementation

• Shaders

  • https://www.gsn-lib.org/docs/nodes/raytracing.php

  • Languages

    • shader languages comparisons
    • slang

  • Compilation

    • https://github.com/google/shaderc-rs

Acceleration structure

• see this nvidia blog for best practices for acceleration structures (and hit shading)

glTF

• 2.0 reference guide pdf
• 2.0 spec
• khronos tutorials
• https://www.gltfeditor.com/

• Extensions

  • KHR_lights_punctual

• Models

  • Khronos sample assets
  • Lantern

Performance

• https://zeux.io/2020/02/27/writing-an-efficient-vulkan-renderer/

  • Syncronization

    • https://themaister.net/blog/2019/08/14/yet-another-blog-explaining-vulkan-synchronization/
    • https://xanderbert.github.io/2025/04/13/VulkanMemoryBarriers.html
    • https://cpp-rendering.io/barriers-vulkan-not-difficult/
    • gpuopne - vulkan barriers explained
    • khr blog on image layout

  • Memory allocation

    • https://blog.io7m.com/2023/11/11/vulkan-memory-allocation.xhtml
    • https://github.com/Traverse-Research/gpu-allocator
    • https://github.com/gwihlidal/vk-mem-rs
    • https://docs.vulkan.org/guide/latest/memory_allocation.html

  • Queues

    • https://gpuopen.com/learn/concurrent-execution-asynchronous-queues/

Miscelleaneus

• graphics APIs
• Semantic Versioning 2.0.0

• Coordinate Systems

  • nalgebra computer-graphics recipes
  • https://learnopengl.com/Getting-started/Coordinate-Systems

• Rust

  • https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/
  • https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/

• Vulkan

  • docs
  • tutorial
  • unofficaila tutorial
  • paminerva tutorial