Light Tracer Render
Web Service for Online 3D Visualization

The performance of web rendering mostly depends on the graphics card used, but there are some other factors. Below, we will briefly describe how to configure the browser for maximum performance. Please note that currently, our 3D rendering service works on desktop versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and requires WebGL 2. Other platforms are not officially supported (but Chromium-based browsers should work fine).

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 discrete GPU on a multi-GPU system

If your PC has several GPUs, or your laptop is equipped with NVIDIA Optimus technology, please ensure that a Web browser is running on the most powerful graphics card. The simplest way to identify the GPU used for online rendering is to check the https://webglreport.com/. Here, in the field "Unmasked Renderer" you may see currently using graphics card. Also, please ensure that your browser supports WebGL 2 that is required to launch our web rendering service. If your browser uses integrated GPU instead of discrete graphics, please try these instructions: How to run WebGL on discrete Nvidia GPU for notebooks with Nvidia Optimus.

Use native OpenGL as graphics backend

Also, since Light Tracer is implemented with WebGL 2, it is highly reasonable to switch underlying 3D API to OpenGL. That will not only improve the performance but make the shader compiling process 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 open, you will see a list of features that you can enable or disable. We 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 with your changes in place.

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).

Our online rendering service is based on a verified unbiased rendering engine. Rendering correctness 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 based and fully compatible with PBR workflow. The default settings are adjusted so that the output renders are slightly biased but keep visually plausible results with minimal render times.

Given the strict requirements for working on the web, the Light Tracer's render engine represents color with RGB values. Nevertheless, it supports spectral effects like 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. But, 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 it is very difficult to see actual visual differences between RGB and spectral rendering. Moreover, spectral rendering is computationally more expensive and generates more noise. For these reasons, Light Tracer is built on the RGB ray tracing engine.

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 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.

Our online rendering service can run almost on any GPU produced after 2012 – 2013. In particular, it works fine on NVIDIA GeForce 600 series or higher, AMD Radeon RX 200 series or higher, Intel HD Graphics 4000 series or higher.

The standalone (native) version of Light Tracer Render is available for both Windows 10 (64-bit) and macOS High Sierra or newer (10.13+). As for the web version, it works on any desktop OS (including Windows, Linux, and macOS) from compatible web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, etc.). Note that WebGL 2.0 support on Safari is still under development, so please use Chromium-based web browser to run the rendering software on macOS.

The performance of our web rendering solution is comparable with the high-performance GPU engines available today. Moreover, it is close to the performance of engines built for the NVIDIA RTX platform. At the same time, the 3D rendering service provides a very important advantage: it works directly in a Web browser delivering uncompromised rendering quality on any compatible device (desktop versions of Chrome, FireFox, and Edge browsers supported).

Our 3D rendering service is designed to meet the needs of engineers, designers, and architects. Light Tracer can be used in the fields of Product Design, Interior Design, Advertising, Jewelry Design, Online Configurators and 3D Viewers, Architectural Visualization, and Industrial Design. In just a few steps, apply stunning effects, add textured materials to get beautiful and truly realistic results.

Light Tracer's rendering engine is a reusable component with JavaScript/C++ application programming interface (API). It is available for integration into both native and web applications on custom licensing terms. Please contact info@lighttracer.org for details.