A Quick Overview

What started as a small experiment based on Ray Tracing in One Weekend has turned into a fully featured path tracer built on Metal for Apple Silicon.

It now includes hardware ray tracing, physically-based materials, environment lighting, and denoising — all running natively on M-series GPUs.

The project aims to blend artistic rendering and technical research, keeping everything modular, transparent, and reproducible.

The Current State

• Hardware and software ray-tracing backends (Metal RT + BVH)

• Physically-based materials: metals, plastics, glass, SSS, and car paint

• HDR lighting with multiple importance sampling

• Progressive accumulation and real-time previews

• AOV-based denoising (OIDN)

• Scene DSL for quick iteration and custom setups

What’s Coming Next

• Finalizing version 1.0 with improved material models and caustics  

• Volume and fog rendering  

• Spectral lighting experiments  

• Real-time denoising for interactive scenes  

Supporters get early access to devlogs, HD renders, and detailed write-ups of the Metal architecture, scene format, and rendering algorithms.

Why Support

Your support helps sustain ongoing development, testing, and research time — keeping this renderer evolving as both an open creative project and a technical exploration of Apple’s Metal ecosystem.

Supporters receive:

•  Early access to technical devlogs  

• Exclusive full technical papers (PDF)  

•  Preview builds and scene files  

• Behind-the-scenes breakdowns  

Closing

This project started as a learning challenge and is now becoming a production-ready renderer.  

If you’re interested in the intersection of graphics research and artistic rendering, consider joining and following the updates.