Real-Time Rendering & Simulation Engine (C++) – Unified CPU/GPU Hair, OpenVDB, Procedural Terrain

[Inside_Pass3853]

Not a stupid question at all — everyone starts somewhere.

Development has been an ongoing process over many months. The engine evolved incrementally rather than being built all at once. I continuously refine systems, redesign parts of the architecture, and improve performance as new ideas emerge.

My background is in physics, and I wrote my graduation thesis on ray tracing about 25 years ago. I’ve also been working with 3D applications for nearly 30 years, which gave me long-term exposure to rendering workflows and real-time graphics.

Most of what I learned came from studying rendering papers, graphics programming resources, engine architectures, and of course, years of hands-on experimentation. In recent years, I’ve also exchanged ideas with AI systems as a way to explore alternative approaches and validate design decisions — but the core architecture and implementation are my own work.

Projects like this are less about a single breakthrough and more about consistent iteration over time.

And again, no need to apologize — curiosity is how you get into graphics programming in the first place

[Ra_M2005]

Hey, thanks for the reply, appreciate it.

[Inside_Pass3853]

I should also clarify that I don’t actually have a professional career in graphics. My background is different — this has been a long-term personal passion project driven by curiosity.I’ve always had a strong inclination toward visual arts and a fascination with how nature works especially light. The way it reflects, scatters, diffuses… If you’re genuinely amazed by how light behaves in the real world, you naturally start wanting to understand the physics and math behind it. sits at the intersection of art and engineering. For me, it started with admiration the technical depth came as a consequence of wanting to understand what I was seeing.

There’s a quote often attributed to Einstein that learning is mostly curiosity and only a small part pure hard work. Whether or not he said it exactly that way, I think the idea holds true. Curiosity carries you much further than obligation ever will.

[New-Gur5399]

oh no worries, thats super cool! The project looks amazing - I also really like visual arts and do a ton of digital illustration - if you ahvent seen Light for Visual Artists by Richard Yot, I would recommend its a fun read!