🎯 Ray Tracer in C++ with SFML

A CPU-based ray tracer built from scratch using C++ and SFML 3.0. Features real-time rendering with reflections, shadows, and animated spheres.

✨ Features

• 3 Spheres — Red, Blue, and Animated Metallic sphere
• Reflections — Mirror-like reflective surfaces
• Shadows — Soft shadow casting from multiple light sources
• Specular Highlights — Realistic light shading
• Reflective Floor Plane — Ground with reflection effect
• 2 Colored Lights — Warm and cool light sources
• Animated Rendering — Metallic sphere bounces in real-time
• Gradient Sky — Blue sky background

📸 Screenshot

🛠️ Built With

• C++17
• SFML 3.0.2 — Window and graphics rendering
• CMake — Build system
• MinGW (GCC 16.1) — Compiler

📁 Project Structure

ray-tracer-cpp/
├── src/
│   └── main.cpp       # Full ray tracer source code
├── CMakeLists.txt     # CMake build configuration
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

🚀 How to Build

Prerequisites

• MinGW-w64
• CMake
• vcpkg with SFML installed

Install SFML via vcpkg

vcpkg install sfml:x86-mingw-dynamic

Build Steps

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=C:/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake \
         -DSFML_DIR=C:/vcpkg/installed/x86-mingw-dynamic/share/sfml \
         -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER="C:/mingw64/mingw32/bin/gcc.exe" \
         -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER="C:/mingw64/mingw32/bin/g++.exe" \
         -G "MinGW Makefiles"
mingw32-make

Run

.\RayTracer.exe

Note: Copy SFML debug DLLs to build folder:

copy "C:\vcpkg\installed\x86-mingw-dynamic\debug\bin\*.dll" ".\build\"

🎮 Controls

Key	Action
R	Re-render scene
Esc	Close window

📐 Ray Tracing Concepts Used

• Ray-Sphere Intersection — Quadratic equation solving
• Ray-Plane Intersection — Dot product based
• Phong Shading — Ambient + Diffuse + Specular
• Shadow Rays — Secondary ray casting for shadows
• Reflection Rays — Recursive ray tracing (max depth 3)
• Vec3 Math — Custom 3D vector struct

👤 Author

Snehal Thombare
GitHub: @snehal-thombare08