Neo3dEngine Review 2026: A 3D Console Renderer Built From Scratch in C#

Neo3dEngine is a minimalist CPU-based 3D console engine in C# with raycasting, dynamic lighting, .obj loader, and TCP multiplayer — all with zero external graph

Building a 3D renderer from scratch is one of the most instructive exercises in computer graphics — you learn exactly how 3D scenes are translated into pixels, with no abstraction hiding the maths. Neo3dEngine by Ivan Sobolev takes this further, building a full 3D engine that renders to the terminal console, with raycasting, dynamic lighting, object loading, and even TCP multiplayer, all without a single external graphics library.

Neo3dEngine is an open-source 3D console rendering engine developed by Ivan Sobolev on GitHub. Written in C# targeting .NET 8, it renders 3D scenes in the terminal using ASCII/Unicode characters. The engine is entirely self-contained — no OpenGL, no DirectX, no Unity, no external graphics APIs of any kind.

Every component is built from scratch: vector maths, ray-triangle intersection, lighting calculation, the TCP network manager, and the packet serialisation system. This makes it an exceptional learning resource as well as an impressive technical achievement.

Neo3dEngine renders 3D scenes using CPU-based raycasting and raytracing. Every pixel in the terminal output is computed by tracing rays from the camera through the scene and calculating intersections, lighting, and shading — all on the CPU.

The engine implements dynamic lighting with shadows. Light sources in the scene cast realistic shadows based on ray-triangle intersection testing, producing visually convincing depth in the terminal output.

Neo3dEngine can load standard .obj 3D model files. This means you can create models in Blender or any other 3D modelling tool and render them in the terminal engine.

The engine includes a TCP-based multiplayer system built entirely from scratch. Custom binary packet serialisation, an event subscription model, and a client-server architecture allow multiple players to share the same 3D scene in real time.

The ray-triangle intersection algorithm used is a manual implementation of Möller–Trumbore, one of the most efficient ray-triangle intersection algorithms available. This is visible in the codebase and readable as a direct implementation of the mathematical derivation.