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Pigeon Devlog #1 — Building a Vulkan Renderer From Scratch

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Practical Part: I started a new renderer from zero and I named it Pigeon . Behavioral scientists use pigeons in experiments. They were used not because they are exceptionally smart, but because they are consistent, trainable, and respond predictably to feedback. That is the spirit of this project: small, controlled experiments that learn from results—try, measure, adjust, repeat. Bistro Scene rendered in Pigeon Right now, Pigeon loads and renders glb models without problems. I parse meshes, materials, and transforms, then upload vertex and index buffers to GPU memory. I set up image samplers for textures and a basic PBR-friendly path for albedo and normals, keeping the pipeline simple to debug. It is still a minimal engine, but it already shows the shape of a real tool. Vulkan is different from older APIs because it gives explicit control. I create instances, devices, and queues so I know exactly where work is going. I record command buffers that describe every draw. I manage synch...
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Subsurface scattering

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Hello everyone, and welcome to the final blog post of my advanced ray tracing course journey! In this project, I worked on implementing the subsurface scattering (SSS) algorithm described in Jensen’s 2001 paper titled “A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport.” [1] I must say that this has been one of the most challenging papers I have encountered so far, as it contains extensive mathematical theories on how to render translucent materials. Dragon Scene rendered with Subsurface Scattering (SSS) Introduction Jensen's paper introduces a method for approximating subsurface scattering using a bidirectional surface scattering distribution function ( BSSRDF ). [1] Subsurface scattering is essential for rendering translucent materials realistically because many materials, like skin, are somewhat translucent in real life. Without this effect, objects may appear completely opaque and unnatural. Subsurface scattering models how light enters a surface, scatters inside the material (o...
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Closing the Ray Tracing Journey: BRDFs, Object Lights, and Path Tracing

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Hello everyone and welcome to the sixth and final blog of my ray tracing journey! In this assignment, I have implemented BRDFs, Object Light and Path Tracing features in Raven. While I titled this blogpost with “Closing the Ray Tracing Journey”, it actually marks the beginning of my exploration into Path Tracing world. I look forward to dedicating my time to learning more about this exciting world. Sponza Scene with 100 samples rendered in 24 min 1. BRDFs BRDFs (Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions) determine how much light is reflected from a surface based on the angles of incoming and outgoing light. They are essential for calculating diffuse and specular shading at a specific point on the surface. Until now, we have only used the Blinn-Phong shading model. With this assignment, the following types of BRDFs will be supported: Phong Modified Phong Normalized Modified Phong Blinn-Phong   Modified Blinn-Phong Normalized Modified Blinn-Phong   Torrance-S...
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Illuminating Raven: Adding HDR and Advanced Lighting to Raven

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Hi everyone and welcome to the fifth blog of my ray tracing journey. In this assignment, I have implemented new types of lights in Raven; directional, spot and environment light. In addition to that, Raven now supports High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering and tone mapping. Dragon New with Spot Scene rendered in 287ms Implementation: HDR Rendering and Tone Mapping We will no longer save our outputs as PPM or PNG files that clipped to 8-bit [0-255] range. Instead, we can save the rendered images as HDR format using the .exr format. Additionally, Raven will have the capability to tone map these images and save them as PNG images. For reading and writing HDR images, I used tinyexr library. For tone mapping, I implemented Reinhard’s Photographic Tonemapping Algorithm. Cube Point HDR Scene rendered in 39ms. Directional Light Directional lights are defined by two key parameters, radiance and direction , and are treated as if they originate at an infinite distance, making all rays parallel. This...
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