PBRT.jl

This project is an exploration into the viability of Julia for use in physically based rendering as compared to Python (py_src) and C++ (cpp_src) when looking at optimization strategies and overall performance. A secondary goal is to gain some insights into how to effectively apply language APIs for larger projects, in this case jluna for C++ and juliacall for Python.

Installation

If you don't have julia installed, you can download it here.

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/KaiErikNiermann/julia-bsc-thesis.git

2. Build the Dockerfile

   docker build -t pbrt-runner .

3. Either mount to the Docker container or attach to it

   option 1 - Mounting to the container

   docker run -v $(pwd):/mnt -it pbrt-runner

   option 2 - Attaching to the container

   Install the Dev Containers extension for VScode, and then just attach to the running container.

Directories explained

Directory	Description
build	Contains compiled binaries and build artifacts for the cpp PBRT implementation
cpp_src	Contains C++ source code files for the project, uses CMake for compilation.
docs	Project documentation using Documenter.jl
logs	Stores any log files for the PBRT implementation (e.g. memory profiling)
notebooks	Contains Jupyter notebooks for benchmarking, debugging, and other analysis
paper	Cotnains the main research paper and research proposal
py_src	Contains Python source code files for the project ; project uses poetry
scenes	Stores scene files in the wavefront object format (.obj)
src	Contains the main source code for the project, in Julia.
test	Constains tests for the main Julia implementation

Scripts explained

Script	Description
install_deps.sh (local setup)	Script to install dependencies for the C++ project.
setup.sh (local setup)	Setup script for initializing or configuring the project environment w/o docker
opt-tools.sh (optional)	Shell script for setting up optional tools nice to have for development
install-extensions.sh (recommended)	Script that installs the extensions that I recommend using for the project, they should allow you to interact with any part of the project
update-ext.sh (optional)	Script that updates the extension installer with the current extensions