null.dev.

Ray Tracer

I wrote a Ray Tracer in Rust.
Published 3/3/2026.

I wrote a Ray Tracer along reading the books Ray Tracing in One Weekend book series.

I chose to write it in Rust.

I added the possibiliy to load some scene configuration files and to convert some STL file into those scene.

Sources are available on GitHub.

Pictures

Features

Materials
  • Glass
  • Lambertian
  • Metal
  • Light
Textures
  • Solid color
  • Checker
  • Image
  • Procedural noise
  • Marble
Shapes
  • Sphere,
  • Quad
  • Triangle
Transformations
  • Scale
  • Rotation
  • Translation
Misc
  • Load scene configuration
  • Create scene configuration
  • Convert STL files into scene configuration

Setup

git clone https://codeberg.org/null_dev/ray-tracer.git

cd ray-tracer

cargo install --path ./packages/ray-tracer

Usage

Get help
nd-ray-tracer help
Create a scene

You can obtain the list of available creation subcommands.

nd-ray-tracer create help

Let's create a scene with two boxes standing in a Cornell box.

  1. First, we need a cornell box model 
    nd-ray-tracer create cornell-box --output cornell-box-model.json
  2. then, we need a cube model 
    nd-ray-tracer create cube --output cornell-box-model.toml
  3. now we can a scene using these two models 
    {
    "camera": {
        "background_color": [0, 0, 0],
        "look_at": [0.5, 0.5, 0.5],
        "look_from": [0.5, 0.5, -1.625],
        "field_of_view": 35,
        "samples_per_pixel": 200,
        "ray_max_bounces": 50
    },
    "textures": [[
        "cube1", { "SolidColor": {
            "color": [0.9803921569, 0.7019607843, 0.5294117647]
        }}
    ], [
        "cube2", { "SolidColor": {
            "color": [0.537254902, 0.7058823529, 0.9803921569]
        }}
    ]],
    "materials": [[
        "cube1", { "Lambertian": { "texture": "cube1" }}
    ], [
        "cube2", { "Metal": {
            "fuzz": 0.025,
            "texture": "cube2"
        }}
    ]],
    "instances": [[
        "cornell-box", { "Scene": {
            "path": "cornell-box-model.json"
        }}
    ], [
        "cube1", { "Scene": {
            "path": "cube-model.toml",
            "material": "cube1"
        }}
    ], [
        "cube2", { "Scene": {
            "path": "cube-model.toml",
            "material": "cube2"
        }}
    ]],
    "scene": [{
        "Ref": { "id": "cornell-box" }
    }, {
        "Translate": { "offset": [0.25, 0, 0.25], "object": {
            "RotateY": { "angle": 0.7853981634, "object": {
                "ScaleU": { "factor": 0.25, "object": {
                    "Translate": { "offset": [-0.5, 0, -0.5], "object": {
                        "Ref": { "id": "cube1" }
                    }}
                }}
            }}
        }}
    }, {
        "Translate": { "offset": [0.750, 0, 0.625], "object": {
            "RotateY": { "angle": -1.0471975512, "object": {
                "ScaleV": { "scale": [0.25, 0.75, 0.25], "object": {
                    "Translate": { "offset": [-0.5, 0, -0.5], "object": {
                        "Ref": { "id": "cube2" }
                    }}
                }}
            }}
        }}
    }]
}
    cornell-box-scene.json
Render a scene
nd-ray-tracer render                      \
        -fv                               \
        --width 800                       \
        --aspect-ratio 1                  \
        --samples-per-pixel 500           \
        --ray-max-bounces 50              \
        --output cornell-box-scene.png    \
    cornell-box-scene.json

Credits

All textures and 3D STL models are licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

Textures

3D models