Raytracing Audio 🔊🌟

The idea was to create a custom-built C++ core framework designed to unify optical and acoustic phenomena through real-time raytracing. By leveraging a single mathematical foundation, it simulates both the behavior of light (Whitted/Path Tracing) and the propagation of sound through virtual environments. But it is still WIP, just created the raytracing part, no audio yet :)

You can see the devlog on my portfolio website.

🛠️ Technology Stack

• Language: C++20
• Framework: SerraEngine (Custom core engine)
• Windowing & Input: SDL3
• Graphics API: OpenGL (via GLAD)
• Math: GLM
• Build System: CMake (3.20+)

🏗️ Architectural Boundaries

The engine is engineered with strict adherence to SOLID principles and modular design:

• Core Orchestration: High-level minimal loop, decoupled from the underlying renderer.
• Agnostic Renderer: The pixel/sample buffer is oblivious to whether it's rendering optical photons or acoustic phonons.
• Material System: Unified Material structures that contain both optical parameters (Reflectance, Refraction) and acoustic coefficients (Absorption, Scattering).
• Modern Audio Pipeline: Utilizes the new SDL3 audio stream API (SDL_GetAudioStreamData) instead of legacy audio callbacks for seamless, low-latency playback.

🚀 Building from Source

Prerequisites

• CMake 3.20 or higher
• A C++20 compatible compiler (MSVC, GCC, or Clang)
• SDL3
• OpenGL development libraries

Build Instructions

# Clone the repository and the SerraEngine dependency
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/raytracing-audio.git
cd raytracing-audio

# Create a build directory
mkdir build && cd build

# Configure with CMake
cmake ..

# Build the project
cmake --build . --config Release

📜 Development Guidelines & Coding Standards

• Memory Management: Strictly modern C++ idioms (std::unique_ptr, std::shared_ptr). Zero raw new/delete allocations in the high-level logic.
• Composition over Inheritance: The Entity and Scene structures are built to remain lightweight and extensible.
• Performance: Hot paths are profiled and optimized for cache coherency. Interface segregation guarantees the Raytracer logic never depends on external APIs like SDL_Window.

📚 Acknowledgements & References

The project has been inspired by various learning resources:

• CPU Raytracing: Ray Tracing in One Weekend
• Compute Shaders: Jakubg05, Kidrigger, LWJGL Wiki
• Vulkan Raytracing: TheCherno

📄 License

This project is open-source and available under the terms of the MIT License.