Ataraxia Engine

This project is a GPU-accelerated path tracing engine built with CUDA and Vulkan. It is still in the early stages of development, in addition to the core rendering system, it also includes a scene system, a camera system, and a UI system. It is built with the intention of being a learning experience for me, and to serve as a foundation for future projects.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Showcase
• Building
• Usage
• License
• Contributing

Features

Core Rendering

• Real-time path tracing using CUDA
• Physically based rendering (PBR) with Cook-Torrance BRDF
• Support for diffuse and metallic materials with configurable properties:
  • Albedo
  • Roughness
  • Metallic factor
  • Fresnel reflection (F0)
• Multiple importance sampling for efficient light sampling
• Cosine weighted hemisphere sampling
• GGX microfacet distribution
• Accumulation buffer for progressive refinement

Scene System

• Sphere primitive support with configurable:
  • Position
  • Radius
  • Material assignment
• Point light system with:
  • Position
  • Color
  • Intensity
• Interactive camera with:
  • WASD movement
  • Mouse look
  • FOV control
  • Near/far clip planes

Technical Details

• Hybrid rendering pipeline using Vulkan for display and CUDA for compute
• Multi-threaded ray direction computation
• ImGui-based UI for real-time parameter tuning
• GLFW windowing system
• GLM math library integration

Performance

• Parallel ray tracing on GPU
• Configurable bounce depth
• Frame accumulation for noise reduction
• Real-time FPS counter and render time display

Showcase

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Building

Currently only supports Windows 10/11 with Visual Studio 2022, to be tested on Linux.

Requires:

• CUDA Toolkit
• Vulkan SDK
• GLFW
• GLM
• ImGui

Windows

1. Clone recursively: git clone --recursive https://github.com/1neskk/Ataraxia

2. Run the dependency installer if needed: Scripts/dependencies.bat

3. Run the build script: Scripts/build.bat

4. Open the resulting solution file: cd build && start Ataraxia.sln

Usage

The engine provides an interactive viewport where you can:

• Move the camera using WASD keys and right mouse button
• Adjust material properties in real-time
• Configure light parameters
• Toggle accumulation for higher quality renders
• Reset frame accumulation when needed
• Monitor performance metrics

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a pull request.