Top 5 C++ Rasterizer Projects
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I got this itch too when I came across tinyrenderer [1] and worked through the early lessons through shading, but didn't quite finish the texture mapping yet [2]. It was fun to work in pure C from first principles, even side-questing to write a simple TGA file reader and writer.
I'd be very interested to see your tutorial when it's done!
[1] https://haqr.eu/tinyrenderer
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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SoftGLRender
Tiny C++ Software Renderer / Rasterizer, and implements OpenGL and Vulkan renderers for comparison
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Project mention: Canvas_ity: A tiny, single-header <canvas>-like 2D rasterizer for C++ | news.ycombinator.com | 2026-02-21
Author here. I have a JavaScript port of my automated test suite (https://github.com/a-e-k/canvas_ity/blob/main/test/test.html) that I used to compare my library against browser implementations. I was surprised by all of the browser quirks that I found!
But compiling to WASM and running side-by-side on that page is definitely something that I've thought about to make the comparison easier. (For now, I just have my test suite write out PNGs and compare them in an image viewer split-screen with the browser.)
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raster-i
A 3D FPGA GPU for real-time rasterization with a tile-based deferred rendering (TBDR) architecture, featuring transform & lighting (T&L), back-face culling, MSAA anti-aliasing, ordered dithering, etc.
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Index
What are some of the best open-source Rasterizer projects in C++? This list will help you:
| # | Project | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | tinyrenderer | 23,696 |
| 2 | SoftGLRender | 1,139 |
| 3 | canvas_ity | 612 |
| 4 | raster-i | 256 |
| 5 | VSC | 119 |
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