Open-source Vulkan ray tracing renderer for glTF 2.0 scenes — RTX path tracing, physically based rendering, AI denoising, and a built-in scene editor.
| glTF Renderer |
|---|
 |
A production-quality Vulkan ray tracing renderer for glTF 2.0 scenes. Includes a high-fidelity RTX path tracer with full PBR material support, DLSS Ray Reconstruction and OptiX AI Denoiser, a rasterizer preview path, and a complete scene editor — built for graphics developers who want a reference they can study, profile, and extend.
Built in C++ on nvpro_core2 with Slang shaders. Successor to vk_raytrace.
- Ray tracing reference — Monte Carlo path tracer with NEE, MIS, and adaptive sampling for physically accurate glTF PBR results.
- AI denoising — DLSS Ray Reconstruction and OptiX AI Denoiser produce clean images at interactive rates.
- Rasterizer preview — Fast PBR rasterizer shares scene resources for instant iteration.
- Scene editor — Hierarchy manipulation, transform gizmo, material editing, undo/redo, save back to glTF.
- 27 glTF extensions — Anisotropy, clearcoat, transmission, volume, sheen, iridescence, dispersion, Draco, and more.
- Developer tools — GPU profiler, memory tracker, shader hot-reload (F5), headless batch mode.
The demo shows a short end-to-end workflow: switching renderer modes, tuning settings, and inspecting scene content in the integrated editor.
| Requirement | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 / Linux | Windows 11 / Ubuntu 22.04+ |
| GPU | NVIDIA RTX 20-series (Turing) | NVIDIA RTX 40-series (Ada) |
| Driver | 535+ | Latest Game Ready / Studio |
| CMake | 3.22 | 3.28+ |
| C++ Compiler | C++20 (MSVC 2022 / GCC 12 / Clang 15) | MSVC 2022 17.8+ |
| Vulkan SDK | 1.3 | Latest |
# Clone (repositories must be siblings)
git clone https://github.com/nvpro-samples/nvpro_core2.git
git clone https://github.com/nvpro-samples/vk_gltf_renderer.git
cd vk_gltf_renderer# Windows
cmake -B build -S . -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release
.\_bin\Release\vk_gltf_renderer.exe# Linux
cmake -B build -S . -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build
./_bin/vk_gltf_renderer| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
USE_DLSS |
ON |
Enable DLSS Ray Reconstruction integration |
USE_OPTIX_DENOISER |
ON |
Enable OptiX AI Denoiser (requires CUDA Toolkit) |
USE_DRACO |
ON |
Enable Draco mesh compression support |
BUILD_TESTING |
OFF |
Build unit tests and benchmarks |
- Ray tracing: High-quality path tracing reference for glTF PBR materials — Monte Carlo global illumination, next event estimation, multiple importance sampling, and adaptive sampling.
- Profiler, GPU monitor, GPU memory tracking, and statistics.
- Shader hot-reload (F5) for developers who want to experiment.
- AI denoisers: DLSS Ray Reconstruction and OptiX AI Denoiser.
- Rasterizer fallback mode enables fast scene interaction and validation.
- A scene asset editor with hierarchy operations, a transform gizmo, material editing, merging, and saving back to glTF (non-destructive).
- Support for 27 glTF extensions, including anisotropy, clearcoat, transmission, volume, sheen, iridescence, dispersion, diffuse transmission, material variant and scattering.
- HDR environments, a physical sun and sky model, depth of field, and multiple tone mappers.
- Animation support includes skeletal, morph targets, and KHR_animation_pointer.
More features --> User Guide
| Feature | Preview |
|---|---|
| Showcase |     |
| Material features |       |
| Lighting and camera |     |
For a full walkthrough of rendering modes, editor workflows, and feature screenshots, see the User Guide.
- ✅ glTF 2.0 (.gltf/.glb)
- ✅ Images (HDR, PNG, JPEG, KTX, KTX2, DDS, WebP)
- ✅ Buffers (geometry, animation, skinning)
- ✅ Textures and samplers
- ✅ Materials (PBR metallic-roughness and specular-glossiness)
- ✅ Animations (keyframe, skeletal)
- ✅ Skins
- ✅ Morph targets
- ✅ Cameras (perspective and orthographic)
- ✅ Punctual lights (directional, point, spot)
- ✅ Nodes and scene hierarchy
- ✅ Multiple scenes
- ✅ KHR_animation_pointer
- ✅ KHR_draco_mesh_compression
- ✅ KHR_lights_punctual
- ✅ KHR_materials_anisotropy
- ✅ KHR_materials_clearcoat
- ✅ KHR_materials_diffuse_transmission
- ✅ KHR_materials_dispersion
- ✅ KHR_materials_emissive_strength
- ✅ KHR_materials_ior
- ✅ KHR_materials_iridescence
- ✅ KHR_materials_pbrSpecularGlossiness
- ✅ KHR_materials_sheen
- ✅ KHR_materials_specular
- ✅ KHR_materials_transmission
- ✅ KHR_materials_unlit
- ✅ KHR_materials_variants
- ✅ KHR_materials_volume
- ✅ KHR_materials_volume_scatter
- ✅ KHR_mesh_quantization
- ✅ KHR_meshopt_compression
- ✅ KHR_node_visibility
- ✅ KHR_texture_basisu
- ✅ KHR_texture_transform
- ✅ KHR_xmp_json_ld
- ✅ EXT_mesh_gpu_instancing
- ✅ EXT_texture_webp
- ✅ MSFT_texture_dds
- User Guide — ray tracing and rasterizer settings, PBR materials, scene editor, camera, environment, tone mapping, CLI reference, and troubleshooting.
- Developer Guide — architecture overview, source structure, Vulkan ray tracing pipeline, testing, and contributor notes.
- Rendering Architecture — data flow from glTF model to GPU, BLAS/TLAS acceleration structures, and render nodes.
Apache License 2.0 - Copyright (c) 2023-2026, NVIDIA CORPORATION.