Show HN: A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia
Published: (February 19, 2026 at 05:55 AM EST)
1 min read
Source: Hacker News
Source: Hacker News
Overview
We ported pbrt‑v4 to Julia and built it into a Makie backend, so any Makie plot can now be rendered with physically‑based path tracing.
Julia compiles user‑defined physics directly into GPU kernels, allowing anyone to extend the ray tracer with new materials and media—e.g., a black hole with gravitational lensing is implemented in ~200 lines of Julia.
The renderer runs on AMD, NVIDIA, and CPU via KernelAbstractions.jl, with Metal support coming soon.
Demo scenes
- (GitHub repository)