rasterm

A 3D software renderer written in Rust, rendered entirely in the terminal. No GPU required.

A software rasterizer built from scratch in Rust. No GPU, no OpenGL — pure CPU rasterization rendered to the terminal via ANSI escape codes.

Features

• Software rasterization with programmable vertex/fragment shaders
• Sutherland-Hodgman near-plane frustum clipping
• Per-pixel depth buffering with bounding-box edge-function rasterizer
• Perspective-correct texture mapping with bilinear sampling
• Directional lighting with two-sided Lambertian diffuse + Blinn-Phong specular
• Keyframe animation system with linear, smooth, and step interpolation
• Morph target vertex animation (Suzanne smile demo)
• OBJ model loading with automatic triangle reduction
• ASCII and 24-bit true color rendering modes
• Parallel terminal output via rayon
• Adaptive resolution on terminal resize
• 5 built-in demo scenes with choreographed camera paths
• Interactive camera controls (orbit, zoom, pause)

Usage

# ASCII mode (default) - launches demo reel
cargo run --release

# 24-bit true color mode (recommended)
cargo run --release -- --color

# Load a custom OBJ model
cargo run --release -- model.obj --color

# Load with a texture
cargo run --release -- model.obj --texture diffuse.png --color

Controls

Key	Action
1-5	Switch demo scene
Tab	Next demo
WASD / Arrows	Orbit camera (manual override)
+/-	Zoom in/out
Space	Pause/resume
Q	Quit

Demo Scenes

1. Triforce - Golden Triforce with breathing orbit camera
2. Suzanne - Blender's monkey head with animated smile morph
3. Torus - Golden torus with swooping camera
4. Spaceship - Hand-modeled ship with flyby camera
5. Goblet - Lathe-turned golden goblet with elegant orbit

Architecture

src/
├── engine/
│   ├── raster/       # Rasterizer, clipping, shaders, depth buffer
│   ├── render/       # Scene, camera, renderer, materials, textures
│   ├── terminal/     # ASCII & color terminal output (parallel)
│   └── animation/    # Keyframe animation with interpolation
├── loader/           # OBJ file loading & geometry reduction
└── main.rs           # App, demos, camera choreography
models/               # Bundled OBJ models (Blender exports)

Building

cargo build --release

License

MIT