Compute Shader Raytracing
Background
This was a personal project that I embarked on throughout the summer of 2024 to establish an understanding of the concept of raytracing on a base level. It is obviously a very deep topic, but especially in the graphics programming, it is a very hot skill and something worth learning as the graphics world continously evolves and is leaning more into raytracing every year.
Description
For this project, I explored compute shaders and applied them to basic raytracing techniques with Unity. Using denoising techniques and a super basic blinn-phong lighting setup, I was able to create what you see in front of you. This was created by using Unity's implementation of Compute Shaders as well as Render Textures to output a properly rendered frame with decent quality.
What I Learned
Advanced topics are advanced for a reason: Raytracing is a mountain of a task, getting it to work on a base level took many hours. There is obviously many routes to go, but even dipping toes into advanced topics is always something valuable.Expand Your Skill Set: I am very much a graphics person, but it is always good to expand the amount of knowledge you have for other disciplines. Building systems, doing level design, learning Blender, learning something more advanced even in graphics, anything that can allow you to diversify your skills can really help, not only your own individual production, but also help give for a better product in a team setting as well.