BRL-CAD / Gallery
Beyond
the surface.
Solid geometry. Remarkable imagery.
From the elegance of an algorithm to the detail of an engineered assembly, explore what happens when precise models meet light.
Explore the collectionReal BRL-CAD work, selected from project documentation and the historical gallery. Open any image to explore its story and source.
Sphereflake · procedural geometry
A world of reflections
Five levels of recursively arranged spheres become a landscape of reflections. Environment mapping, soft shadows and a checkered floor reveal structure at every scale.
BRL-CAD documentation contributors · Source & method
The collection
A closer look.
Engineering, generated forms and the art of seeing inside.
Stryker · path-traced scene, 2004
Every blade of grass is geometry
An archival demonstration of full-scene light transport: a detailed vehicle sits among modeled foliage and grass. The image records 11,542,992 triangles and eight trillion rays, rendered with ADRT/RISE on 2004 hardware—not a present-day performance claim.
2004 U.S. Army Research Laboratory · BRL-CAD documentation · Source & method
Acrylic ball bearing
See through the assembly
An ordinary bearing becomes an optical study. Transparent races reveal the rolling elements inside, while reflections and refraction describe the shape of the complete solid assembly.
BRL-CAD documentation contributors · Source & method
Parametric nautilus
Growth, expressed in geometry
A growing elliptical aperture sweeps along a logarithmic spiral to make a closed, ray-traceable shell. One parametric generator produces this nautilus and several other shell forms.
BRL-CAD procedural geometry gallery · Source & method
Geodesic space frame
One strut. A whole structure.
A single strut prototype is instanced along the unique edges of a geodesic sphere. Joint spheres complete an intricate space frame without individually modeling every member.
BRL-CAD procedural geometry gallery · Source & method
Voxelized gyroid · cutaway
Inside a mathematical surface
Sampling a three-dimensional scalar field turns a repeating gyroid into volume geometry. A cutaway exposes its internal passages; the blue companion demonstrates an extruded height field from the same workflow.
BRL-CAD procedural geometry gallery · Source & method
Interwoven torus chainmail
Connected, without intersecting
Individual torus rings thread through their neighbors to form a woven sheet. The generator varies tube thickness and color across the pattern, demonstrating an assembly of interlocking solid parts.
BRL-CAD procedural geometry gallery · Source & method
Earth cutaway · archive selection
A world within the world
A removed wedge opens the globe into nested solid layers, bringing otherwise hidden volumes into view. Surface mapping contrasts with the exposed interior in this historical illustration—not a scientific scale model.
Historical BRL-CAD gallery · individual creator unrecorded · Archive source
Transparent pen · archive selection
An everyday object, revealed
A transparent housing reveals the refill, spring and internal mechanism of a familiar pen. Rather than cutting the object apart, the rendering lets us see how its components fit together.
Historical BRL-CAD gallery · individual creator unrecorded · Archive source
The rendering lab
One model.
Different answers.
These views use the same Cornell-box model and camera. Change how it is rendered to reveal shape, orientation or surface coordinates.
Shaded
Material color, direct lighting, shadows and reflection.
rt -l0
Surface normals
Color encodes surface direction, making orientation changes visible.
rt -l2
Edges
A line rendering isolates silhouettes and visible edges.
rtedge
Surface coordinates
A vivid test map shows surface coordinates: red tracks U, blue tracks V. This reveals mapping independently of material appearance.
rt -l6BRL-CAD renderer showcase · Read the method and reproduce these views
People behind the geometry
Keep exploring.
A few paths into the wider community, from creative coding to the next generation of tools.
What are you making?
Share your BRL-CAD work with the community. Include the model or method, an image credit and permission to feature it.
Sources, not stock imagery.
Every image here is real BRL-CAD work, selected from project documentation or recovered from the official historical gallery. Captions link to the documented method or archive provenance. Historic images are not claims about current rendering speed.
The recovered Earth and pen images are displayed with the website maintainer's permission. Their individual creators and original artwork licenses were not recorded; the documentation license does not apply to them.
Image credits & curation notes · Image license notes · More from BRL-CAD on Facebook