Open Source Ray Tracing Library
OpenRT is a C++ ray-tracing library, which allows for synthesis of photo-realistic images. First of all, the library is developed for academic purposes: as an accompaniment to the computer graphics course and as a teaching aid for university students. Specifically, it includes the following features:
- Distribution Ray Tracing
- Global Illumination
OpenRT aims for a realistic simulation of light transport, as compared to other rendering libraries, such as based on rasterisation, which focuses more on the realistic simulation of geometry. Effects such as reflections and shadows, which are difficult to simulate using other algorithms, are a natural result of the ray tracing algorithm. The computational independence of each ray makes our ray-tracing library amenable to a basic level of parallelisation. OpenRT is released under a BSD license and hence it is free for both academic and commercial use. The code is written entirely in C++ with using the OpenCV library.
Check out the project site for all the details like
- Online documentation
- Installation guide
- Tutorials
Please join the OpenRT-user Q&A forum to ask questions and talk about methods and models. Framework development discussions and thorough bug reports are collected on Issues.
Installation
OpenRT is a cross-platform C++ library. The description here was tested on Windows 10 / Visual Studio 2019, macOS Catalina 10.15.6 / Xcode 11.4 and Ubuntu 18.04 / gcc 7.3.0. If you encounter errors after following the steps described below, feel free to contact us via our User Q&A forum or Issues. We'll do our best to help you out. OpenRT has only one dependency: it is based on OpenCV library. In order to use the OpenRT library, the OpenCV library should be also installed.
Installing OpenCV
- Download the latest version of the OpenCV library from https://www.opencv.org/releases
- Build and install the library. You may follow the following guidance:
Installing OpenRT
- Download either the latest stable OpenRT version from Project X Research or fork the latest snapshot from our GitHub repository
- Unpack it to your local folder (for example to disk C:\ for Windows or to /Users/username/ for MacOS, so the library path will be C:\OpenRT\ or /Users/username/OpenRT/)
Installation in Windows and macOS
Building OpenRT from Source Using CMake GUI
In case you want to build the library (recommended), follow these instructions, otherwise - skip this step and proceed to Using the Pre-built Libraries. This step also assumes that you have downloaded the sources of the OpenRT library.
- Download and install CMake for your operating system
- Run cmake-gui.exe in Windows or CMake.app in MacOS
- In the "Where is the source code" field choose the OpenRT source directory: OpenRT. In the "Where to build the binaries" field choose directory where Visual Studio or Xcode project files will be generated: e.g. OpenRT/build
- Press Configure button and choose Visual Studio for using 32-bit compiler, Visual Studio Win64 for using 64-bit compiler or Xcode as building environment
- Be sure that the OpenCV_DIR is pointing to the OpenCV installation directory (e.g. OpenCV/build/install or /usr/local/share/OpenCV), where OpenCVConfig.cmake file is located
- (Optionally) you can change CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to the directory where the OpenRT binaries will be installed (e.g. to OpenRT/build/install)
- Press one more time Configure and then Generate, so the IDE project files will be generated in the OpenRT/build
- Open the generated project by pressing the Open Project button or directly by opening file OpenRT/build/OpenRT.sln or OpenRT/build/OpenRT.xcodeproj
- Build ALL_BUILD and INSTALL projects first for Debug and then for Release configuration. That will copy OpenRT headers, binaries and demonstration applications to the install folder OpenRT/build/install
- Windows users may copy the OpenCV binaries into the install folder by executing script /OpenRT/build/install/bin/copyOpenCVDLL.bat
- (Optionally) you can copy the install folder with the ready-to-use OpenRT library (e.g. OpenRT/build/install) to any other folder
Using the Pre-built Libraries
This step assumes that you have downloaded OpenRT-package with the pre-build binaries. In such case the type and version of the downloaded binaries should correspond to your C++ compiler. If it is not, please return to the Building OpenRT from Source Using CMake GUI section and generate the binaries with your compiler. The content of the install folder (e.g. OpenRT/build/install) will correspond to the downloaded pre-build OpenRT package.
Installation in Linux
Building OpenRT from Source Using Terminal
For installing the OpenRT library for Ubuntu we assume that the OpenCV library was already installed (Installing OpenCV), thus GCC, CMake and Git are also installed. In order to download and install the latest version from master input the following commands in terminal:
cd ~/<my_working_directory>
git clone https://github.com/Project-10/OpenRT.git
cd OpenRT
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local
make
make install
make clean
