fresnel is a python library for path tracing publication quality images of soft matter simulations in real time. The fastest render performance is possible on NVIDIA GPUs using their OptiX ray tracing engine. fresnel also supports multi-core CPUs using Intel's Embree ray tracing kernels. Path tracing enables high quality global illumination and advanced rendering effects controlled by intuitive parameters (like roughness, specular, and metal).

Subscribe to the fresnel-users mailing list to receive release announcements, post questions for advice on using the software, and discuss potential new features. File bug reports on fresnel's issue tracker. fresnel is an open source project. Please review the contributor's guide for more information before contributing.

Read the tutorial and reference documentation on readthedocs. The tutorial is also available in Jupyter notebooks in the fresnel-examples repository.

Here are a few samples of what fresnel can do:

See the installation guide for details on installing fresnel with conda, docker, singularity, and compiling from source.

This script generates the spheres gallery image:

import fresnel, numpy, PIL

data = numpy.load('spheres.npz')

scene = fresnel.Scene()
scene.lights = fresnel.light.cloudy()

geometry = fresnel.geometry.Sphere(
    scene,
    position = data['position'],
    radius = 0.5,
    outline_width = 0.1)

geometry.material = fresnel.material.Material(
    color = fresnel.color.linear([0.1, 0.8, 0.1]),
    roughness = 0.8,
    specular = 0.2)

out = fresnel.pathtrace(scene, samples=64,
                        light_samples=32,
                        w=580, h=580)
PIL.Image.fromarray(out[:], mode='RGBA').save('sphere.png')