15 years of experience in 3D application development outside of the of film industry, two years of contributions to Blender and a lot of luck of being at the ri

15 years of experience in 3D application development outside of the of film industry, two years of contributions to Blender and a lot of luck of being at the right place at the right time. In my opinion, don't write your own renderer unless you can really invest a lot of time into it. There are countless "spheres in a Cornell box" path tracers out there, you'll not excite anyone with the basics. Contribute to existing software like Blender or Appleseed instead, that will give you a lot more visibility and demonstrate that you can write robust code.