Nelarius
@nelarius.bsky.social
Maps @ Mapbox 🗺️ | Ray tracing ✨ | Voxels ◽️
My rendering notes: https://nelari.us/
GitHub: https://github.com/nelarius
My rendering notes: https://nelari.us/
GitHub: https://github.com/nelarius
And the final result, with the original 8spp noisy image for reference again.
Pixel peepers will see all sorts of problems with the filtered result, and the edge stopping function could be improved using tricks from the SVGF paper. Still, it's better than waiting for an 2048 spp image to converge 😄
Pixel peepers will see all sorts of problems with the filtered result, and the edge stopping function could be improved using tricks from the SVGF paper. Still, it's better than waiting for an 2048 spp image to converge 😄
November 15, 2025 at 8:14 AM
And the final result, with the original 8spp noisy image for reference again.
Pixel peepers will see all sorts of problems with the filtered result, and the edge stopping function could be improved using tricks from the SVGF paper. Still, it's better than waiting for an 2048 spp image to converge 😄
Pixel peepers will see all sorts of problems with the filtered result, and the edge stopping function could be improved using tricks from the SVGF paper. Still, it's better than waiting for an 2048 spp image to converge 😄
The biggest difference is that the À-trous algorithm is run iteratively, with the previous c' being used as input for the next run. Each iteration, the gap between neighboring pixels q doubles. The linked paper used 5 iterations.
November 15, 2025 at 8:09 AM
The biggest difference is that the À-trous algorithm is run iteratively, with the previous c' being used as input for the next run. Each iteration, the gap between neighboring pixels q doubles. The linked paper used 5 iterations.
Finally, moving to the À-trous wavelet algorithm yields still better results. The filter looks similar to the previous one, with the spatial Gaussian replaced with a cubic B-spline.
November 15, 2025 at 8:05 AM
Finally, moving to the À-trous wavelet algorithm yields still better results. The filter looks similar to the previous one, with the spatial Gaussian replaced with a cubic B-spline.
The edges are now preserved, but the spatial blur is still not sufficient for removing the noise.
November 15, 2025 at 8:00 AM
The edges are now preserved, but the spatial blur is still not sufficient for removing the noise.
The Gaussian blur can be improved by applying an edge stopping function. It's a Gaussian blur with extra weight multipliers controlling for color and normals, not just distance from the center pixel.
November 15, 2025 at 7:58 AM
The Gaussian blur can be improved by applying an edge stopping function. It's a Gaussian blur with extra weight multipliers controlling for color and normals, not just distance from the center pixel.
This results in a blurred image, which is a start!
November 15, 2025 at 7:56 AM
This results in a blurred image, which is a start!
First, ran the image through a Gaussian blur. The new color c' is the average over neighboring pixels.
November 15, 2025 at 7:55 AM
First, ran the image through a Gaussian blur. The new color c' is the average over neighboring pixels.
Worked on a homemade ray tracing denoiser. Ended up with something in the spirit of À-Trous wavelet and SVGF papers, which works quite well for simple, diffuse #voxel meshes.
8 spp images, before and after. Details of journey from Gaussian blur to À-Trous wavelet denoiser in thread 🧵👇
#raytracing
8 spp images, before and after. Details of journey from Gaussian blur to À-Trous wavelet denoiser in thread 🧵👇
#raytracing
November 15, 2025 at 7:51 AM
Worked on a homemade ray tracing denoiser. Ended up with something in the spirit of À-Trous wavelet and SVGF papers, which works quite well for simple, diffuse #voxel meshes.
8 spp images, before and after. Details of journey from Gaussian blur to À-Trous wavelet denoiser in thread 🧵👇
#raytracing
8 spp images, before and after. Details of journey from Gaussian blur to À-Trous wavelet denoiser in thread 🧵👇
#raytracing
Added a quick and dirty VOX importer to my #voxel project. Since I recently played through Monument Valley, I checked out Ephtracy's Monument Valley files first 🏛️
October 16, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Added a quick and dirty VOX importer to my #voxel project. Since I recently played through Monument Valley, I checked out Ephtracy's Monument Valley files first 🏛️
The planetary sunrises and sunsets you get with the Unreal sky model are probably overkill for the #voxel renderer, but makes for nice #screenshotsaturday material 🪐
October 4, 2025 at 3:42 PM
The planetary sunrises and sunsets you get with the Unreal sky model are probably overkill for the #voxel renderer, but makes for nice #screenshotsaturday material 🪐
Integrated the Unreal Engine sky model into the #voxel editor. The sunsets didn't look right in the Hosek-Wilkie model (left). With the new sky model, sunsets are now exactly how I wanted them 🌅
Pardon the fireflies, I need to get proper denoising set up ✨
#raytracing
Pardon the fireflies, I need to get proper denoising set up ✨
#raytracing
October 1, 2025 at 4:59 AM
Integrated the Unreal Engine sky model into the #voxel editor. The sunsets didn't look right in the Hosek-Wilkie model (left). With the new sky model, sunsets are now exactly how I wanted them 🌅
Pardon the fireflies, I need to get proper denoising set up ✨
#raytracing
Pardon the fireflies, I need to get proper denoising set up ✨
#raytracing
The images show a 2D look-up table of scattered light.
The sun position and camera altitude can be played around with in real time. But zooming to space and back just looks so good 😄
The sun position and camera altitude can be played around with in real time. But zooming to space and back just looks so good 😄
September 20, 2025 at 12:17 PM
The images show a 2D look-up table of scattered light.
The sun position and camera altitude can be played around with in real time. But zooming to space and back just looks so good 😄
The sun position and camera altitude can be played around with in real time. But zooming to space and back just looks so good 😄
Good morning from an altitude of 40 km!
Putting off other tasks in the #voxel project to work on a much nicer ray-marched sky for the ray tracer.
#screenshotsaturday #raymarching #raytracing
Putting off other tasks in the #voxel project to work on a much nicer ray-marched sky for the ray tracer.
#screenshotsaturday #raymarching #raytracing
September 20, 2025 at 12:13 PM
Good morning from an altitude of 40 km!
Putting off other tasks in the #voxel project to work on a much nicer ray-marched sky for the ray tracer.
#screenshotsaturday #raymarching #raytracing
Putting off other tasks in the #voxel project to work on a much nicer ray-marched sky for the ray tracer.
#screenshotsaturday #raymarching #raytracing
One unexpected benefit of the color palette is storing just an offset index in the voxel. Voxels shrank from 4 bytes to a single byte.
Added a simple SIMD optimization in my RLE algorithm, yielding a 6x #voxel chunk compression speed up 🏎️
#screenshotsaturday
Added a simple SIMD optimization in my RLE algorithm, yielding a 6x #voxel chunk compression speed up 🏎️
#screenshotsaturday
September 13, 2025 at 2:03 PM
One unexpected benefit of the color palette is storing just an offset index in the voxel. Voxels shrank from 4 bytes to a single byte.
Added a simple SIMD optimization in my RLE algorithm, yielding a 6x #voxel chunk compression speed up 🏎️
#screenshotsaturday
Added a simple SIMD optimization in my RLE algorithm, yielding a 6x #voxel chunk compression speed up 🏎️
#screenshotsaturday
Mandatory view of the scene in the #raytracing mode ✨
September 5, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Mandatory view of the scene in the #raytracing mode ✨
Adding an editable color palette to the #voxel editor made it feel more like a real tool. I was finally able to actually make something in it 🤓 Perfect playground for making scenes to test #raytracing algorithms!
#indiedev
#indiedev
September 5, 2025 at 5:17 AM
Adding an editable color palette to the #voxel editor made it feel more like a real tool. I was finally able to actually make something in it 🤓 Perfect playground for making scenes to test #raytracing algorithms!
#indiedev
#indiedev
Experimenting with a face extrusion and retraction brush in my toy #voxel editor. Threw a bit of #raytracing in there while I was at it ✨
August 4, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Experimenting with a face extrusion and retraction brush in my toy #voxel editor. Threw a bit of #raytracing in there while I was at it ✨
Realized that my bookshelf contains a #programming story 😄
July 26, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Realized that my bookshelf contains a #programming story 😄
More sliders in the #voxel editor UI! Added okhsl sliders alongside the regular hsl ones. The okhsl color space is much more uniform along its axes (look at the lightness slider).
Björn Ottoson has a great write-up about the colorspace here: bottosson.github.io/posts/colorp...
Björn Ottoson has a great write-up about the colorspace here: bottosson.github.io/posts/colorp...
July 12, 2025 at 6:53 AM
More sliders in the #voxel editor UI! Added okhsl sliders alongside the regular hsl ones. The okhsl color space is much more uniform along its axes (look at the lightness slider).
Björn Ottoson has a great write-up about the colorspace here: bottosson.github.io/posts/colorp...
Björn Ottoson has a great write-up about the colorspace here: bottosson.github.io/posts/colorp...
Basics of the new #voxel UI layout implemented. Apple's RGB sliders are really nice and decided to try implementing those.
#cprogramming
#cprogramming
July 9, 2025 at 5:09 AM
Basics of the new #voxel UI layout implemented. Apple's RGB sliders are really nice and decided to try implementing those.
#cprogramming
#cprogramming
Tried Claude for creating interactive mockups of a #voxel editor UI and color scheme. Pretty happy with how quickly I was able to see and play around with some ideas I had.
Now for the fun part, implementing it all by hand in C 🙂
#claude #anthropic
Now for the fun part, implementing it all by hand in C 🙂
#claude #anthropic
July 6, 2025 at 4:02 PM
Tried Claude for creating interactive mockups of a #voxel editor UI and color scheme. Pretty happy with how quickly I was able to see and play around with some ideas I had.
Now for the fun part, implementing it all by hand in C 🙂
#claude #anthropic
Now for the fun part, implementing it all by hand in C 🙂
#claude #anthropic
Went down a rabbit hole comparing my monolithic ray tracer to my wavefront implementation and trying to find performance improvements. Still many things I could do to improve wavefront performance, but sharing notes on progress so far.
nelari.us/post/wavefro...
#raytracing #rendering
nelari.us/post/wavefro...
#raytracing #rendering
July 1, 2025 at 6:06 AM
Went down a rabbit hole comparing my monolithic ray tracer to my wavefront implementation and trying to find performance improvements. Still many things I could do to improve wavefront performance, but sharing notes on progress so far.
nelari.us/post/wavefro...
#raytracing #rendering
nelari.us/post/wavefro...
#raytracing #rendering
June 14, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Added Russian Roulette implementation to my #voxel renderer. Didn't really appreciate before -- it doesn't make the image better, it makes it quicker to render. Left/right: vanilla and russian roulette at 16 spp. Speedup with roulette is 1.5x.
Impl from github.com/boksajak/ref...
#raytracing
Impl from github.com/boksajak/ref...
#raytracing
June 12, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Added Russian Roulette implementation to my #voxel renderer. Didn't really appreciate before -- it doesn't make the image better, it makes it quicker to render. Left/right: vanilla and russian roulette at 16 spp. Speedup with roulette is 1.5x.
Impl from github.com/boksajak/ref...
#raytracing
Impl from github.com/boksajak/ref...
#raytracing
Plugged the two-sample estimator into my #voxel project and sampled the sun disk using the cone sampling distribution from a previous post. It yields much better results at 64 spp than brute force method (left image).
Looks close enough to make it a new baseline for the reference renderer 🤞
Looks close enough to make it a new baseline for the reference renderer 🤞
June 1, 2025 at 6:05 AM
Plugged the two-sample estimator into my #voxel project and sampled the sun disk using the cone sampling distribution from a previous post. It yields much better results at 64 spp than brute force method (left image).
Looks close enough to make it a new baseline for the reference renderer 🤞
Looks close enough to make it a new baseline for the reference renderer 🤞