SunPath (Sunray V2)

Rust hardware real time path-tracing library

This project was developed by Riccardo-Finello supervised by Professor Marco Patrignani for the bachelor thesis at the University of Trento, Italy
It's based on the sunray project developed by kalsifer-742 and circled-square

Contribution

If you wish to contribute to the project you may check our issues, or if you found a bug or missing feature feel free to create one. You may also contact us at the e-mail addresses linked to our GitHub accounts.

If you're studying at University of Trento and are looking for a thesis subject you can ask Professor Marco Patrignani to be your supervisor to work on this project and we will be available if you need help or clarifications.

Thesis proposals:

• Library Integration kalsifer-742#52

Comparison

	Active project	Non-trivial	Real-time	Fully ray-traced	Hybrid	GPU	HW RT	Compute	SIMD	BVH	Mesh	Materials	Denoise	Rust	Crate	Engine	Notes
Kajiya	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	?	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
Cycles	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	N/A	✅ Blender
manta-ray	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	N/A	✅ Blender
luxcore	✅	✅	❌	?	?	✅	❌	✅	?	?	✅	✅	?	❌	N/A	✅ Blender
akari_render	❌	✅	?	?	?	✅	❌	✅	?	?	✅	✅	?	✅	❌	✅ Blender	Rebuild blender to install
KaminariOS/rustracer	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	uses Nix
RayTracingInVulkan	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	?	✅	✅	partial	❌	❌	N/A	❌
referencePT	❌	✅	?	?	?	✅	✅	❌	❌	?	✅	✅	?	❌	N/A	❌
gbrt	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌
Godot4-RayTracing	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	partial	❌	❌	N/A	✅ Godot
Raytracing_Godot4	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	N/A	✅ Godot
bevyray	✅	❌	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	partial	❌	✅	❌	✅ Bevy	raytracing in fragment shader
hanamaru-renderer	❌	❌	❌	?	?	❌	❌	❌	?	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	docs are in japanese
rtwlib	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌
rustic-zen	❌	❌	✅	?	?	❌	❌	❌	?	?	?	?	?	✅	✅	❌	2D
andros21/rustracer	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌
sunray	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅	partial	❌	✅	✅	❌
sunPath	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅	✅	partial	✅	✅	✅	❌

Resources

General

• Nvidia tutorial on vulkan KHR raytracing
• SaschaWillems basic ray tracing tutorial (C++)
• SaschaWillems vulkan tutorials (C++)
• Khronos vulkan samples (C++)
• Ray Tracing in One Weekend - series

• Other projects

  • hatoo/ash-raytracing-example (Rust)
  • adrien-ben/vulkan-examples-rs (Rust)

Rendering

• Ray Tracing Gems II
• pbrt
  • book
• PBR for materials
  • page 197 - appendix B: BRDF Implementation

• Shaders

  • https://www.gsn-lib.org/docs/nodes/raytracing.php

  • Languages

    • shader languages comparisons
    • slang

  • Compilation

    • https://github.com/google/shaderc-rs

Acceleration structure

• see this nvidia blog for best practices for acceleration structures (and hit shading)

glTF

• 2.0 reference guide pdf
• 2.0 spec
• khronos tutorials
• https://www.gltfeditor.com/

• Extensions

  • KHR_lights_punctual

• Models

  • Khronos sample assets
  • Lantern

Performance

• https://zeux.io/2020/02/27/writing-an-efficient-vulkan-renderer/

  • Syncronization

    • https://themaister.net/blog/2019/08/14/yet-another-blog-explaining-vulkan-synchronization/
    • https://xanderbert.github.io/2025/04/13/VulkanMemoryBarriers.html
    • https://cpp-rendering.io/barriers-vulkan-not-difficult/
    • gpuopne - vulkan barriers explained
    • khr blog on image layout

  • Memory allocation

    • https://blog.io7m.com/2023/11/11/vulkan-memory-allocation.xhtml
    • https://github.com/Traverse-Research/gpu-allocator
    • https://github.com/gwihlidal/vk-mem-rs
    • https://docs.vulkan.org/guide/latest/memory_allocation.html

  • Queues

    • https://gpuopen.com/learn/concurrent-execution-asynchronous-queues/

Miscelleaneus

• graphics APIs
• Semantic Versioning 2.0.0

• Coordinate Systems

  • nalgebra computer-graphics recipes
  • https://learnopengl.com/Getting-started/Coordinate-Systems

• Rust

  • https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/
  • https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/

• Vulkan

  • docs
  • tutorial
  • unofficaila tutorial
  • paminerva tutorial