Real-Time Ray Tracing

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to announce that I’ve begun revisiting my ray tracing plugin for Roblox (ROBLOX Ray Tracing Plugin). Since I last worked on it, Roblox has introduced many valuable features that I’m incorporating into an updated and rewritten ray tracer.

For now, I’ve shifted my focus from a general plugin idea to in-game functionality, such as rendering thumbnails for shop GUIs and creating baked mirrors.

The key benefit of this Render Module is its ability to generate dynamic and fast renders. This eliminates the need to export scenes to Blender, render them, upload them to Roblox, and risk potential takedown by Roblox’s AI content management system.


Render Examples:


Resolution: 896x448
Light objects: 1
Rendertime: ~2.12 seconds


Resolution: 896x448
Light objects: 1
Rendertime: ~2.23 seconds


Resolution: 448x448
Light objects: 1
Rendertime: ~1.03 seconds


Resolution: 448x448
Light objects: 3 (1x fully red, 1x fully green, 1x fully blue)
Rendertime: ~1.77 seconds


The module even supports real-time ray tracing at a resolution of 70x70 pixels. While this may seem low, it’s important to remember that Roblox development currently restricts GPU access, requiring all ray tracing to be performed on the CPU. Even with this limitation, achieving real-time ray tracing on Roblox is a noteworthy accomplishment.


Real-Time Ray-Tracing example:


However, there are some challenges. Notably, Roblox hasn’t yet released EditableImages for the client version, restricting the Render Module’s current functionality to Roblox Studio.

The potential of this module is significant. With further optimization, it has the potential to become a valuable tool for creators, offering a user-friendly and efficient alternative to traditional rendering methods.

I’m already thrilled to hear about your feedback!

  • DosenSuppe2_0
5 Likes

This is incredibly awesome. If you manage to do significant optimizations to your plugin and turn it into a module that can work in the Roblox Client, this can grant the power of ray tracing for Roblox players.

Aside from optimizations, improving the quality and the colors should also be done.

(An idea: Using native luau, you can make the complex math calculations run significantly faster.)

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Wow! This looks absolutely amazing! I would however suggest that you add some blurriness to the reflections as they look to be a bit tooo reflective. Other than that it looks absolutely amazing!

I think I am gonna learn parallel luaU as well and make something similar now.

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