I recently came across an interesting Github repo for a Global Illumination reference renderer.

https://github.com/lighttransport/nanogi

I was super interested until I got to the Dependencies and Build Requirements. Are you kidding me? talk about a non-starter.

Handmade Hero is such a breath of fresh air on all fronts - and this is coming from someone who has been in the industry for almost 25 years.

From the description (emphasis mine) :

nanogi is a small global illumination (GI) renderer intended...

If all the dependencies were factored in, then suddenly "small" sounds like false advertising.

I like that it depends on something called "ass imp".

- Casey

Hehe...

1.Install some dependencies

1	$ sudo ports install cmake boost glm tbb google-ctemplate

You know, just install some dependencies, no big deal... oh, of course, they will be tools put into your path and available for your entire system. Oh... and don't mind the fact that they need sudo access to install.

No biggie!

Now I realise its goals are more modest, however 99 lines and no external dependencies apart from the standard library is probably the record for "small" GI implementations. It even includes a couple of standard variance-reduction optimisations!

Cool link. Thanks for sharing.