erichlof/THREE.js-PathTracing-Renderer

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

2243 stars · 201 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A real-time path tracing renderer built on top of the Three.js WebGL framework, providing global illumination, progressive rendering, reflections, refractions, and soft shadows via GLSL shaders. It runs at 30-60 FPS in the browser, including on mobile devices, and ships with numerous live demos.

Use cases

• render photorealistic scenes with global illumination in the browser
• real-time path tracing on mobile and desktop
• demonstrate ray tracing effects like caustics and soft shadows
• render volumetric fog and light shafts in WebGL
• simulate realistic ocean, sky, and water surfaces
• teach physically-based rendering techniques
• compare path traced renders to real photographs like the Cornell Box

When to choose

• you need real-time global illumination in a web browser
• you want to build interactive 3D demos with physically-based lighting on top of Three.js
• you need path tracing that works on mobile devices
• you are experimenting with or teaching rendering algorithms like ray marching and path tracing

When to avoid

• you need offline, production-quality film rendering rather than real-time approximation
• you need a native GPU renderer outside the browser
• your project requires complex triangle mesh scenes beyond the renderer's supported geometry
• you need a full game engine with asset pipelines and animation systems

Facets

library · maturity active

graphics simulation image-processing graphics web-development simulation browser cross-platform path-tracing ray-tracing global-illumination webgl glsl threejs realtime-rendering progressive-rendering web-server

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