zauonlok/renderer
Renderer
Renderer is a low-level software graphics engine implemented in standard C for educational and experimental real-time computer graphics. It functions as a CPU rasterizer that computes vertex transformations, clipping, texturing, and lighting entirely through software computation without requiring hardware acceleration.
The software includes a geometry pipeline supporting depth and alpha testing, geometry clipping and culling, and perspective-correct attribute interpolation. Its lighting and shading subsystem provides advanced physical simulation including metallic-roughness and specular-glossiness models, high-dynamic-range environment maps, shadow and reflection mapping, and normal mapping. It handles three-dimensional model rendering with textured and rigged character meshes, supporting skeletal animation transformations and custom programmable pixel and vertex shaders.
Additional capabilities cover standard asset importing for common industry file formats, orbital scene navigation via mouse and keyboard inputs, and interactive material inspection through layer-based overlays for modifying physical rendering properties in real time.
Features
- Software Rasterizers - Computes 3D graphics entirely on the CPU through a custom software rasterizer without hardware acceleration.
- Software 3D Rendering - Computes three-dimensional graphics scenes entirely on the CPU using custom shaders and rendering pipelines without requiring hardware acceleration.
- Animated Model Renderers - Displays textured and rigged three-dimensional character or object meshes with support for skeletal animation and material shaders.
- Depth Buffers - Resolves visible surfaces and transparency using depth buffer comparisons and alpha evaluations.
- Vertex and Fragment Shading - Executes custom vertex and fragment shaders to dynamically compute lighting and texturing per pixel.
- Physically Based Rendering - Implements physically based rendering models using metallic-roughness and specular-glossiness equations for realistic surface simulation.
- Frustum Clipping - Removes hidden back-faces and clips primitives against homogeneous coordinates to optimize performance.
- Pixel Blending and Depth Testing - Discards pixels based on depth buffer comparisons and alpha values to handle occlusion and transparency.
- Raster Graphics Libraries - Computes vertex transformations, clipping, texturing, and lighting entirely through software rasterization computation.
- Perspective-Correct Interpolations - Performs perspective-correct interpolation of texture coordinates across polygon surfaces during software rasterisation.
- 3D Lighting and Shadows - Projects shadows from light sources and wraps scenes in cubemapped skyboxes with tangent-space normal mapping for realistic depth and surface detail.
- Advanced Lighting Effects - Applies physically based rendering, normal mapping, shadow mapping, and image-based lighting.
- Skeletal Animation - Calculates joint hierarchies and bone weight transformations to deform rigged character meshes during animation.
- Asset Format Importers - Parses common industry file formats to load 3D models, textures, and scene definitions at runtime.
- 3D Scene Interaction Handlers - Enables orbital scene navigation, zooming, and lighting orientation via mouse and keyboard inputs.
