Aurora is a real-time path tracing renderer that leverages GPU hardware ray tracing. As a real-time renderer, it is intended to support rapid design iteration in a real-time viewport, which differs from a "final frame" production renderer like Autodesk Arnold. Aurora has a USD Hydra render delegate called HdAurora, which allows it to be used from a USD Hydra scene delegate. It can also be used directly through its own API, which is demonstrated with a standalone sample application called Plasma.

Aurora is developed and maintained by Autodesk. The software and this documentation are a work-in-progress and under active development. The contents of this repository are fully open source under the Apache license, with feature requests and code contributions welcome!

Below you can learn about features, system requirements, how to build Aurora, how to run it, and access additional documentation.

Screenshots of the Autodesk Telescope model rendered with Aurora. Model courtesy of Roberto Ziche.

• Path tracing and the global effects that come with it: soft shadows, reflections, refractions, bounced light, and more.
• Interactive performance for complex scenes, using hardware ray tracing in modern GPUs.
• Autodesk Standard Surface materials defined with MaterialX documents, which can represent a wide variety of real-world materials with physically-based shading. Also, independent layers of materials are supported, which can be used to implement decals.
• Environment lighting with a wrap-around lat-long image.
• Triangle geometry with object instancing.
• A USD Hydra render delegate (HdAurora) and standalone sample application (Plasma).

... with new features and enhancements to performance and quality planned. This will include denoising with NVIDIA Real-Time Denoisers, support for alternative material models, discrete light sources, and more.

Aurora is officially supported on Windows 10 or Ubuntu 20.04. Windows 11 and other Linux distributions may work, but are not yet supported.

To run Aurora, the latest GPU drivers from NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel are recommended as ray tracing API support is being actively improved. No other software is required to run Aurora.

Software required for building Aurora can be found in the build instructions.

Aurora requires a GPU with hardware ray tracing support, either through DirectX Raytracing (DXR) on Windows, or Vulkan Ray Tracing on Windows or Linux. These include, but are not limited to:

• NVIDIA GPUs with native ray tracing support include any GPU with "RTX" in the brand name, including mobile GPUs. This includes:
  • The GeForce RTX series, such as the GeForce RTX 2060.
  • The Quadro RTX series, such as the Quadro RTX 4000.
  • The RTX A series, such as the RTX A2000.
• NVIDIA GPUs with compute-based support include any GPU with the "Pascal" microarchitecture and at least 6 GB of RAM. Note that these GPUs will perform substantially slower with GPU ray tracing due to the lack of native ray tracing support. This includes:
  • The GeForce 10 series, such as the GeForce GTX 1080.
  • The Quadro P series, such as the Quadro P4000.
• AMD GPUs with native ray tracing support include any GPU with the "RDNA 2" microarchitecture. This includes:
  • The RX 6000 and RX 7000 series, including the mobile RX 6000M series.
  • The Radeon PRO W6000 series, such as the Radeon PRO W6800.
  • The Ryzen 7 6000 series of mobile processors, which have 600M series integrated GPUs.
• Intel GPUs with native ray tracing support include any GPU with “Xe” architecture and DX12 support. This includes:
  • The Intel™ Arc® Pro A-series for workstations, such as the Intel Arc Pro A40 and Intel Arc Pro A50.
  • The Intel™ Arc® A-series, such as the Intel Arc A380 and Intel Arc A770.

See the build instructions for information on enabling support for DirectX Raytracing or Vulkan Ray Tracing.

NOTE: At this time Vulkan is supported on NVIDIA GPUs only.

Follow these steps to build Aurora and its dependencies and run the sample application, Plasma.

More details on building Aurora can be found here, including options and possible issues you may encounter.

Run the following on a command prompt with compiler tools, such as "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019".

python Scripts\installExternals.py ..\AuroraExternals
cmake -S . -B Build
cmake --build Build --config Release
cd Build\bin\Release
Plasma.exe

python Scripts/installExternals.py ../AuroraExternals
cmake -S . -B Build
cmake --build Build
cd Build/bin/Release
./Plasma --output {OUTPUT_IMAGE_FILE.png} --scene {INPUT_SCENE_FILE.obj} --renderer hgi

Aurora can be exercised in three ways:

• Using the Plasma sample application, either interactively or on the command line.
• Using the HdAurora render delegate, through a compliant USD Hydra-based application like Usdview or certain design applications.
• Using the Aurora unit tests, which use the Google Test framework: Foundation, AuroraInternals, and Aurora.

All of these are built with Aurora, and binaries can be found in the build output directory after following the build instructions.

The Autodesk Telescope model shown above was developed by Roberto Ziche, and was inspired by Celestron products. It is made available for use with Aurora or any another application under the CC BY 4.0 license. You can download a package containing an OBJ version for use with Plasma, or a USD version for use with Usdview or other applications.

Other recommended sources of data include the McGuire Computer Graphics Archive and the ASWF USD Working Group.

Available documentation can by found in the Doc directory. This includes the following:

• Building: instructions for building Aurora, including options.
• Plasma: instructions for using the sample application.
• HdAurora: instructions for using the Hydra render delegate.
• Coding standards.

More information about contributions and licensing can be found here:

• How to contribute to the project.
• The software license, which is the Apache License 2.0.