WHY CHOOSE LIGHT TRACER RENDER?
Physically correct and accurate, our 3D rendering software ensures photorealistic visuals with the best quality and least effort

Incredible
3D rendering tool
Light Tracer is a super easy, fast, and incredible physically-based 3D rendering tool delivering accurate ray tracing on virtually any GPU. With its interactive workflow, you may quickly create amazing photo-real shots and videos of your 3D models. Check out our YouTube channel and Discord to get rendering tips and share your artwork!
Your fastest way to
photo-real visuals
You can use Light Tracer to create stunning renderings for any purpose and industry — whether you are a professional working in a commercial environment or a hobbyist working on a personal project. Quickly produce amazing visuals of your automotive projects, product designs, jewelry projects, architecture visualization, voxel art, and more.
The real-time
workflow you need
Light Tracer reacts to all scene changes interactively, making designing your 3D models an easy and fun process. All the adjustments of materials, light sources, and object positions are immediately visible in the viewport that always displays the final rendering result. More importantly, Light Tracer can fully utilize the power of almost any GPU released within the last decade!
Craft engaging
visual stories
Bring your artwork to life with high-quality video animations! Light Tracer supports animated 3D models and interactive physical simulations. Effortlessly design unique camera paths and lens animations for advertising, visualization, or just for fun! The user-friendly interface is a breeze for beginners while still offering the depth that experienced users crave.
The world’s first
renderer for Web
In addition to native versions, Light Tracer can run directly in a web browser delivering uncompromised raytracing quality. It leverages the power of your GPU and does not suffer from network latency and throughput limitations. You may publish your artwork from the standalone version and showcase it interactively on the web!
If you run the Web version on a dual-GPU laptop, ensure your browser uses a dedicated GPU
We recommend to use at least GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1050 / AMD Radeon RX 560 / Apple M1
RENDERING FEATURES
These are some of the most relevant features of Light Tracer GPU renderer

Physically-based GPU engine
GPU render engine ensures physically-correct light simulation and works on any graphics card. Both discrete NVidia/AMD GPUs and integrated Intel/AMD/Apple GPUs are supported

Fast and efficient
Leveraging the power of the GPU, Light Tracer renders at fully interactive speeds. Any changes to the scene are instantly visible on the screen, allowing you to tweak settings easily

Advanced light transport
Light Tracer uses importance sampling and bi-directional path tracing for intelligent light-path construction. It allows for efficient handling of caustics and hidden light sources

Production ready
Light Tracer supports render passes, advanced post-processing, automatic shadow catching on any surface, and seamless integration with customizable backplates/backdrops

PBR material workflow
Render engine features Disney principled and rough glass materials widely used in production rendering. It accurately simulates metal, plastic, paint, leather, cloth, gemstones, rubber, etc.

HDRI editor / IES lights
Light Tracer designed for image-based lighting (IBL). Import existing HDRI maps or create your studio lighting environments with a built-in HDRI editor. Emissive meshes are supported as well

ACES color workflow
Render engine uses Academy Color Encoding System featuring an RGB-based workflow with a high dynamic range and an ultra-wide gamut encompassing the entire spectral locus

Tone mapping / Post-processing
Light Tracer features an advanced filmic tone mapping curve for displaying HDR images on LDR devices, as well as a thin lens camera model with a physically correct Depth-of-Field (DOF) effect

Real-time AI denoising
Get final images even faster using Intel® Open Image Denoise or NVIDIA OptiX™ denoiser. They allow filtering out noise from your renders, resulting in clean images in a fraction of the time

Built-in physics engine
Thanks to the built-in physics engine, you can interactively set extremely realistic positions of scene objects during transformation. Build your scenes easily!

Labels / stickers
One of the most awaited features is finally here! Now, you can freely place labels and logos on your products with ease. You will be surprised at how intuitive such a workflow can be!

Animation
Light Tracer not only fully supports animated 3D models but also allows you to animate the camera and lens. This will transform the way you think about presenting your finished project!

Materials / HDRI library
To setup scenes quickly, Light Tracer Render comes with a library of 1500+ customizable PBR materials, HDRI environment maps, and studio lights that allow you to get results as soon as possible

3D file formats
Import the most common 3D formats such as OBJ, STL, PLY, (zipped) glTF2.0, FBX, DAE, 3DM, as well as STEP/IGES CAD formats. When importing from CAD, control how accurately surfaces are tessellated

Render in web browser!
Light Tracer is the world's first client-side, ray tracing GPU rendering solution for Web. Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and the latest versions of Safari are now supported!
Web version uses the same rendering engine, but has some limitations
See all features and learn the differences between versions here
Get Light Tracer Render
Download and sign up to get free 14-day trial
GPU released after 2013 with updated driver required (see details)
We constantly improve Light Tracer Render. See what's new in the most recent version
Visualization showcase
Light Tracer Render is used to create high-quality renderings across many industries
More renders and animations on our Instagram!
Choose your plan
Support the development and get full-featured standalone and web versions and extra 3D content
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions regarding Light Tracer's GPU rendering engine
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How to configure a web browser for optimal rendering performance?
The experience is much better with a discrete (dedicated) graphics card. If you have a dual-GPU laptop, take advantage of running the browser on a dedicated GPU, not the integrated one. We recommend at least GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1050 / AMD Radeon RX 560 / Apple M1 to work with Light Tracer Render comfortably.
The web version of Light Tracer Render runs on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and the latest Safari. Note that Safari has only recently got all the necessary features to run Light Tracer, so its support is still experimental. Other platforms are not officially supported, however, Chromium-based browsers should work fine.
Check the status of WebGL 2
The ray-tracing core requires WebGL 2, so please ensure that it is available. You can visit webgl-report for details (check Unmasked Renderer to find out which graphics card is used for rendering).
Use discrete GPU on a dual-GPU laptop
If your laptop has several GPUs (e.g. integrated GPU from Intel/AMD for output and dedicated from NVIDIA/AMD for games), please ensure that the web browser uses a more powerful one (it should be in the Unmasked Renderer). Automatic selection of a dedicated GPU cannot be performed at the application level, so you have to do it yourself:
- macOS: Check the Apple support page Set graphics performance on MacBook Pro.
- Windows (NVIDIA/AMD): set a dedicated graphics card for chrome.exe in the NVIDIA/AMD control panel.
Download/install latest graphics drivers
It is important to keep your graphics drivers up-to-date, because web browsers may not enable WebGL 2 for old GPU driver versions.
Use native OpenGL as graphics backend
Also, since Light Tracer Render is implemented with WebGL 2, it may be reasonable to switch the underlying 3D API to OpenGL. That may improve the performance and makes the shader compiling much faster (as well as renderer initialization time).
In the case of Google Chrome, you can find Chrome flags by just typing "chrome://flags" or "about://flags" in the Omnibox (address/search bar). Once "Chrome flags" is opened, you will see a list of features that you can enable or disable. You need "Choose ANGLE graphics backend" setting that should be set to OpenGL. After changing it, click on “Relaunch” button that will save your changes and restart Chrome.
For using OpenGL in Firefox you need to change the runtime option. Type "about:config" into the address bar. In recent versions of Firefox, find "webgl.disable-angle" variable. By default, it is set to "false": native OpenGL is not used. Set it to "true" to start using OpenGL (browser restart is not needed).
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Is Light Tracer Render biased or unbiased?
Our 3D rendering software is based on a verified unbiased rendering engine. Rendering correctness is verified by comparison with comprehensive physically-based renderers such as PBRT (https://www.pbrt.org/) and Mitsuba (https://www.mitsuba-renderer.org/). The materials are physically correct and based on the Disney Principled model also known as the "PBR" shader, making it compatible with other software such as Pixar’s Renderman®, Unreal Engine®, or Blender. The default settings are adjusted so that the output renders are slightly biased but keep visually plausible results with minimal render times.
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Is Light Tracer Render RGB or spectral?
Given the strict requirements for working in a web browser, the Light Tracer's GPU render engine represents color with RGB values. Nevertheless, it supports spectral effects such as dispersion on refractive objects.
At the same time, spectral rendering is most apparent when used with measured spectral data for both light sources and materials. However, in an artist-driven scene, the light source spectra, are more usually reconstructed from RGB sliders in some way, leading to very smooth spectra, where the visual differences between RGB and spectral rendering are barely noticeable. Moreover, spectral rendering is computationally more expensive and generates more noise. For these reasons, Light Tracer is built on the RGB ray tracing engine.
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Does Light Tracer Render use CPU, GPU, or both?
The rendering process runs entirely on the GPU. The CPU is used only for the preparation of input data (in particular, accelerating structures are built and updated on a CPU). Unlike many other GPU renderers, Light Tracer Render is built on its technology stack using only cross-platform GPU programming interfaces (it does not use NVIDIA CUDA, OptiX, or AMD Radeon Rays). As a result, our rendering software supports different GPUs and operating systems.
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Which GPUs and CPUs are supported?
Light Tracer can run on almost any GPU produced after 2012–2013. In particular, it works fine on NVIDIA GeForce 600 series or higher and AMD Radeon RX 200 series or higher. Also, Light Tracer runs on integrated GPUs, such as Intel HD Graphics 4000 series or higher, Intel Iris Graphics, AMD Radeon Graphics, and Apple M1.
Rendering speed depends entirely on your GPU. For comfortable experience and fast rendering times, we recommend at least GeForce GTX 670 / GeForce GTX 1050 / AMD Radeon RX 560 / Apple M1. If you have a powerful GPU, don't forget to turn off V-Sync, which can limit rendering speed by the monitor refresh rate.
Although our rendering software targets a wide range of graphics cards, it can utilize unique features of modern NVIDIA GPUs to run GPU-accelerated AI denoising. On other systems, you may use a CPU-based Intel AI denoiser, which requires a CPU with SSE 4.2 support.
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Which Operating Systems are supported?
The standalone (native) version of Light Tracer Render is available for both Windows 10 (64-bit) and macOS Catalina or newer (10.15+). As for the web version, it works on any OS (including Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and macOS) from compatible web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, Safari, etc.). Note that Safari has only recently got all the necessary features to run Light Tracer, so its support is still experimental.
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What about mobile devices?
The Light Tracer project arose from the challenging idea of creating a full-featured physically-based renderer that could run even in a web browser.
Today, you can run Light Tracer even on modern phones (both Android and iOS), and with the latest generations of SOCs, you may expect acceptable performance. However, the user experience on such small-screen devices is not good, and they probably need a different UI. We plan to develop this area and improve support for mobile devices.
At the same time, on tablets like the iPad Pro (M1 chip) and Galaxy Tab S8 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 1), Light Tracer can be used quite smoothly, and the screen size is enough for comfortable interaction with the controls. So if you have a powerful tablet, you can try using the web version right now. Version 2.3.2 has got significant improvements for touch screens and touchpads support, so there is no need to connect external control devices.
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How fast is Light Tracer Render in comparison to others?
Light Tracer's rendering performance is on par with the high-performance 3D rendering software available today. However, the rendering performance is not the only goal.
We focus on optimizing the amount of effort you need to set up the 3D scene from start to finish and get the final result. The actual rendering is only a fraction of the total time spent. A simple and intuitive workflow is our primary goal which we pursue in developing our rendering software.
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In what areas can Light Tracer Render be used?
Our 3D rendering software is designed to meet the needs of engineers, designers, and architects. Light Tracer can be used for product design, interior design, advertising, jewelry design, online configurators and 3D viewers, architectural visualization, industrial design, and the game industry. Whatever the kind of project, in just a few steps you can apply textured material presets or create your own, set up studio lighting, add stunning effects and use post-processing tools to create high-end visuals.
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Do I need to be online to run Light Tracer Render?
Yes, but you need to be online only to start Light Tracer Render. Our rendering software uses the Internet to establish a connection with our server in order to verify your license. After launching, Light Tracer can work even in offline mode. Therefore, it is suitable even for users who have unstable internet connection.
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How long does it take to activate a license after purchase?
We deliver fully automated online sales with no human intervention with the help of PayPro Global, our reliable e-commerce partner with exceptional support. Our 3D rendering software is activated in a few minutes after acquiring the license. After that, you can log in to the Light Tracer app with the e-mail you have used to buy the license.
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Can I use the license on multiple computers?
Yes. You may install Light Tracer Render on several computers (e.g., your workstation and laptop) and use it anytime, anywhere. However, you can’t run the rendering software simultaneously on multiple computers (you need to acquire an additional license for this purpose).
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What happens if I cancel my subscription?
The subscription can be canceled anytime at no additional cost. Note, even if you cancel the plan, you will be able to use our 3D rendering software until the end of your billing period. Past that time, your subscription will be terminated, and there will be no more fees. You may subscribe again at any time.
Perpetual license can not be canceled. Payment for it is charged once upon purchase, after which you may use the rendering software for an unlimited time.
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Can I use Light Tracer engine in my own products?
Light Engine possesses unique expertise to develop intelligent and interactive 3D product visualization software powered by proprietary visualization technology. Light Tracer's rendering engine is a reusable software component with its JavaScript/C++ API and is available for integration into both native and web applications. For further assistance and licensing details, please contact info@lighttracer.org.