> Starting with a software renderer is nuts.
No, not really. You can write a simplistic ray tracer and rasterizer in about 10 - 50 lines tops:
https://github.com/d26900/JamaisVu/blob/main/tests.c
Lines 66 - 91.
The result/screenshot: https://github.com/d26900/JamaisVu
If this is "nuts", then so be it. Let me be nuts. :P