R Observatory: Metrics for rayrender version 0.42.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

rayrender

0.42.0Package record

Build and Raytrace 3D Scenes

2packages dependsuggested by 5

34.1Kdownloads / year

–test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Tyler Morgan-WallCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗

Render scenes using pathtracing. Build 3D scenes out of spheres, cubes, planes, disks, triangles, cones, curves, line segments, cylinders, ellipsoids, and 3D models in the 'Wavefront' OBJ file format or the PLY Polygon File Format. Supports several material types, textures, multicore rendering, and tone-mapping. Based on the "Ray Tracing in One Weekend" book series. Peter Shirley (2018) https://raytracing.github.io.

Changes in 0.42.0

Move EXR white-balance baking controls from the render functions to sky_light_image(). Cache each adapted sky for use in stills and animations, reusing the generated sky when only the target white point changes.
Fix Windows near/far macro collisions in geometry and volume code. Remove unused preview state and signedness warnings in BVH construction and spline interpolation, and make haze-cut sorting bounds explicit. Correct RGB-to-HSV conversion to include blue when finding the maximum channel and initialize hue on every path.
Automatically select the NEE integrator for scenes containing native atmospheric skies or attached media, including clouds and instanced media, instead of requiring an explicit integrator_type = "nee" selection. Recognize emitting media when deciding whether to add automatic ambient illumination.

Show all changes in 0.42.0Hide the rest of the changes in 0.42.0

Fix Windows macro collisions in atmospheric lighting and preview test builds using X11. Emit the transform error-bound overloads needed by volume boundaries explicitly so optimized GCC builds load reliably.
Select finite lights with a spatial light BVH in the NEE integrator, using distance, estimated power and emission direction. Retain the previous scattering context for matching MIS probabilities and mix in the original distribution to preserve support for textured and animated emitters.
Accelerate eligible opaque NEE shadow connections with early-exit BVH traversal and reduced triangle intersection work. Select explicit emitters with matching MIS weights, avoiding full light-mixture PDF scans and supporting multiple and instanced lights. Preserve ordered visibility for media and alpha masks, and retain the directional-mixture estimator for atmospheric transport.
Store BVH4 leaf primitive ranges in compact records, reducing BVH memory use.
Reduce BVH traversal bookkeeping while preserving intersection order, and defer unused medium transforms in surface hit records.
Split the interactive preview status bar into camera information and rendering flags on separate rows.
Reuse rendering workers across samples and wake on task completion, removing fixed polling delays from beauty and denoising feature passes while retaining preview cancellation and R interrupt handling.
Reduce the default Moon disk resolution to 256 pixels in moon_light() and automatic sky lights, retaining the Moon renderer's 2x antialiasing.
Skip grid emission lookups for media with zero RGB emission and no temperature field, or with emission disabled by a zero scale.
Keep interpolated camera-up vectors at keyframes to avoid brief roll wobbles when damping camera motion. Keyed positions and lookat targets are retained.
Allow sky_light() below a Sun elevation of -4.2 degrees. Prague contributes black sky and no solar haze, while enabled Moon, stars, and planets retain their light, atmospheric transmission, and Earth occlusion.
Add continuous local evolution to cloud() with t and an independent animation_seed. Broad and fine noise evolve smoothly while position remains controlled by x/y/z. Time zero preserves existing clouds exactly.
Expose sky model settings directly in sky_light() and sky_light_image(). Both accept altitude, visibility, and other named settings instead of a sky_args list. Image resolution and Hosek settings belong to sky_light_image(); native atmospheric sampling uses sampling_resolution.
Add cloud(), a procedural cumulus/stratus volume centered at the origin, with standard position, rotation, and scale controls. The density field and its boundary transform together. Sky examples now use the exported constructor.
Correct the Z rotation matrix used by R-side group and animation transforms to match the positive-angle convention of direct objects and instances.
Enable altitude-dependent lighting, finite haze, and deferred haze sampling by default in sky_light(). Expose haze and query_altitude controls, and reduce horizon bands with haze_filter, sampling one nearby atmospheric path per haze query. Reuse exact spectral queries and precompute transmission reconstruction with cache_spectra, transmission_table, and transmission_table_max_mb.
Exclude haze from volume interiors by default with haze_in_volumes = FALSE. Individual media also support haze and haze_density_threshold; clouds default to haze off, with a density cutoff of 0.05 when enabled.
Add capsule terrain, trees, and cloud examples comparing altitude-dependent lighting and haze, with additional atmospheric controls described in the help.
Fix Moon disk and legacy sky preparation in skymodelr so the upper limb remains visible after the center sets. Normalize the complete disk before horizon clipping, with continuous horizon attenuation and color.
Add sun_light() and moon_light() scene elements using skymodelr positions, apparent sizes, Prague solar radiance, and detailed phase-dependent lunar textures. Dedicated disk sampling preserves detail independently of sky-map resolution, with consistent solid-angle PDFs and light-selection weights. Both lights use the public skymodelr disk generators for radiance and geometry.
Add image-based infinite_light() scene elements, named light management, and additive sampling of multiple environments. Existing environment render arguments remain supported.
Add sky_light() for native Prague location/time skies, with automatically sampled Sun and Moon disks. Add sky_light_image() for cached skymodelr EXRs shared across still renders, animation, and preview.
Make animation environment rotation use the same direction as still renders, and isolate its preview environment transform from geometry transforms.
Preserve preview RGB colors when exporting snapshots through rayimage.
nee now traces surfaces and RGB participating media with null scattering and path-space MIS. Its images change; rtiow remains the default and legacy fog remains available in rtiow and basic.
Add reusable homogeneous, dense-grid and uncompressed float NanoVDB medium descriptions, independent medium attachments, nested containment, anisotropic scattering, and RGB or normalized blackbody emission.
Add volume transmittance alpha, alpha-aware adaptive sampling, color-only denoising for participating media, and consistent RGBA animation and snapshots.
Correct NEE light PDFs, sampler dimension reuse, segment-based dielectric absorption, deterministic volume boundary intersections, and realistic-camera shutter-time preservation.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("rayrender", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("tylermorganwall/rayrender")

Development version from tylermorganwall/rayrender. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-rayrender

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-rayrender

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-rayrender

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 22.7 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK12 OK, 1 FAILURE2026-06-08
WARNING12 OK, 1 WARNING2026-06-07
OK13 OK2026-05-02

Show 3 earlier changesHide 3 earlier changes

NOTE11 OK, 3 NOTE2026-04-22
ERROR10 OK, 3 NOTE, 1 ERROR2026-04-18
NOTE11 OK, 3 NOTE2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 0.42.0

README· In the repository, left out of the releaseVignettesNoNEWSYes · 67% structured · mentions 0.42.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes · pkgdown

Help pages: 152 (64 internal)
Examples that run: 92%82 run in a plain check (81 of them under a condition) · 7 never run
Exported functions with examples: 94%
Documented parameters: 99%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 0%

How these are measured

Downloads

34.1K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #2,332 · ~93/day · ~2.8K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

2.4K30 days

7.3K90 days

34.1K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on606 r2u2 autocran2.1K conda_forge

How downloads are counted

Repository

tylermorganwall/rayrender ↗Account: tylermorganwall

645Stars

42Forks

2Open issues

2Open PRs

0Releases

1,120Commits

5Commit identities

1,120 commits · Last activity 2026-09-18 · +0.2% stars, 30d · Default branch at 0.42.3, ahead of CRAN 0.42.0 (checked 2026-10-22)

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 83%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 14
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 7

Stars over time

2025-10-01 · 6302026-10-21 · 645

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

11 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 5 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/tylermorganwall/rayrender on 2026-10-22.

Continuous integration (2)

GitHub ActionsR CMD check workflow

The R CMD check workflow runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, and on R-devel

Governance and community (2)

Code of conductContributing guide

Docs source (4)

README.Rmdpkgdown

GitHub Pages site last deployed 2026-09-18 · The repository has a site deploy workflow

pkgdown site last built 2026-09-18

Lint, format, editor (2)

AirRStudio project

Show all practicesHide 1 practice

Git structural (1)

.gitattributes

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (2026-10-20)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

33 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing rayrender adds 58 packages (37 with compiled code, 40 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, sp 4.3 MB, spacefillr 3.1 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 4.3.0

Imports (14)

Rcppparallelpng raster decido rayimage (>= 0.27.1)statsprogress rayvertex withr vctrs cli pillar skymodelr

LinkingTo (8)

Rcpp RcppThread progress spacefillr (>= 0.3.0)testthat libopenexr libimath (>= 3.2.2)skymodelr

Suggests (13)

ambient knitr rmarkdown sf spData dplyr Rvcg testthat tibble tree3d rayshader xml2 rgl

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

2direct

1indirect

Imports 2

Suggested by 5

Depends, Imports or LinkingTo, most downloaded first

rayshader raymolecule

Suggests, most downloaded first

skymodelr piecepackr raybevel PoweREST forensicR

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (3)

Tyler Morgan-Wall

Syoyo Fujita

Contributor, Copyright holder

Vilya Harvey

Contributor, Copyright holder · added in 0.21.1

Listed in earlier versions (1)

Melissa O'Neill

no longer listed · 0.4.0 to 0.38.10

Releases (20)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

0.42.0Latest
record
2026-09-16 · current release · diff ↗ ·
added 21 exports
add_camera, add_infinite_light, camera, cloud, get_camera, get_infinite_light, grid_medium, homogeneous_medium, infinite_light, list_cameras, list_infinite_lights, moon_light, nanovdb_medium, preview_camera, remove_camera, remove_infinite_light, set_active_camera, set_medium, sky_light, sky_light_image, sun_light
0.41.3
record
2026-06-16 · diff ↗ ·
removed 2 exports
%>%, run_documentation

added 3 exports
has_denoiser, screen_line, screen_text
R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
0.38.10
record
2025-02-28 · diff ↗
0.38.8
record
2025-02-07 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
set_scene_material
0.34.3
record
2024-08-01 · diff ↗
0.34.2
record
2024-07-27 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
create_instances
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
0.32.2
record
2024-02-20 · diff ↗
0.31.2
record
2023-12-10 · diff ↗ ·
added 2 exports
raymesh_model, run_documentation
0.29.6
record
2023-06-08 · diff ↗
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
0.29.4
record
2023-01-27 · diff ↗
0.28.8
record
2022-10-27 · diff ↗
0.27.1
record
2022-08-15 · diff ↗ ·
added 3 exports
extruded_path, get_saved_keyframes, render_ao

Show 12 earlier eventsHide 12 earlier events

R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
0.23.6
record
2021-11-23 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
animate_objects
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
0.21.2
record
2021-04-07 · diff ↗
0.21.1
record
2021-04-03 · diff ↗ ·
added 29 exports
bezier_curve, csg_box, csg_capsule, csg_combine, csg_cone, csg_cylinder, csg_ellipsoid, csg_elongate, csg_group, csg_object, csg_onion, csg_plane, csg_pyramid, csg_rotate, csg_round, csg_rounded_cone, csg_scale, csg_sphere, csg_torus, csg_translate, csg_triangle, generate_camera_motion, hair, mesh3d_model, path, ply_model, render_animation, render_preview, text3d
0.14.0
record
2020-08-02 · diff ↗ ·
added 5 exports
arrow, cone, generate_studio, glossy, microfacet
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
0.9.1
record
2020-04-19 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
extruded_polygon
0.6.0
record
2020-02-08 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
light
0.4.2
record
2019-11-10 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
diffuse
0.4.0
record
2019-10-09
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26

Package metadata

First published: 2019-10-09
Total releases: 20 / 7 yrs
License: GPL-3 OSI
Copyright: See inst/COPYRIGHTS in the package
Minimum R: ≥ 4.3.0
Download size: 1.1 MB

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("rayrender")

Format

Morgan-Wall, T., Fujita, S., & Harvey, V. (2026). rayrender: Build and Raytrace 3D Scenes (Version 0.42.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.rayrender

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for rayrender version 0.42.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-25. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-25, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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