u/egehancry

Do you think a video like this could help someone with no graphics background intuitively understand ray tracing?

My goal is to explain the core idea visually before introducing any math or technical details. I could expand it with reflections, different materials, and arbitrary 3D objects.

Does this feel like it would "click" for a complete beginner? What would you add or change?

TL;DR: studio.academa.ai - a Manim editor with real-time preview (free to use, with free video exports) and an AI agent (paid feature).

Manim videos are great, but Manim itself is a real hassle to install. And then polishing the videos is painful too, because setting up real-time preview is hard and rendering takes a long time.

So we reimplemented Manim CE from scratch in Rust, on top of wgpu, with GPU acceleration. It compiles to WebAssembly and runs in the browser over WebGPU. We call it manimx, and the goal is 1:1 API compatibility with Manim CE.

Because it's fast and runs in the browser, we were finally able to build a true live preview: you type code, and the preview updates almost instantly.

The full Manim editor, including video exports at any resolution, is free.

On top of that, there's an AI agent that writes Manim code for you. It can render the video and inspect the result in the background, so it iterates on what it actually sees instead of generating code blindly. Because of this, it spends much longer on each scene, and the output is better than other agents out there.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments.

TL;DR: studio.academa.ai, a Manim editor with real-time preview and an AI agent.

Every couple of weeks, someone here asks: "How do I get real-time preview in Manim CE?" The answer is: it's really hard to do with Manim CE.

So we reimplemented Manim CE from scratch in Rust, on top of wgpu, with GPU acceleration. It compiles to WebAssembly and runs in the browser over WebGPU. We call it manimx. The goal is 1:1 API compatibility with Manim CE.

Because it's fast and runs in the browser, we could finally build a true live preview: you type code, and the preview updates very quickly.

You can try it without signing up. Click "Get Started" and edit the Manim code to see the preview change.

On top of that, there's an AI agent that writes Manim code for you. It can render the video and inspect it in the background, so it iterates on what it sees instead of generating code blindly. As a result, it spends much longer on each scene, and the output is better than other agents out there.

Happy to answer anything in the comments, including the hard questions.