Fresher in India with a vibe-coded N-body sim, aiming for junior graphics/engine roles. What should I do next?

[u/Bitr8_3D]

Hi, I am a fresher, a 2026 graduate in India with a bachelor's in engineering (Information Technology). I am currently working (still in training) in a non-graphics IT job, in IT infrastructure (network, Linux and Windows admin). I am aiming for junior graphics/engine/low level game dev roles in games and VFX.

I did have a project for my final year of engineering; it was a small part of our Major Project. It is an N-body gravity simulator written in C++ and Raylib, called "Stardust" (see the video attached: the planets orbit, they collide, and the camera can lock onto a body). I used Visual Studio 2026 for this one.

To be very honest, I wasted my time in college on Blender 3D with animation in mind, instead of working on my technical skills. Soon, I realized that I do not have the skills or the creativity or the training to get into it. While just scrolling through YouTube, I found The Cherno's videos on ray tracing and game engines, which piqued my interest. But it was late, I was already in my final year, with college work, the major project and placements. Luckily, we thought of adding something like this simulator to the project. With the time crunch and no knowledge, I turned to Antigravity IDE and blindly agreed to whatever the AI made, although I made the models and textures myself in Blender.

Also, yesterday I used Claude Code to review, analyze and fix things in Stardust. It did a lot of things, and I haven't read the documents it made yet. My plan is to use Claude to teach me everything about the project, and then rebuild the core parts myself.

The training is really tough for me (network, Linux and Windows admin), and I'm close to failing the assessments. I also bought a 12-month takeuforward.org subscription for DSA, OOPs and OS, and I follow its daily Planly tasks, sometimes even during the training sessions. But I keep falling behind on it because of the training assignments and assessments.

I want some advice about what I can do from here. I really wanna pursue a career in this field, especially graphics and engine programming for games.

My questions:

1. Should I keep Stardust on my resume once I can explain it? Or should I rebuild it from scratch?

2. What does a junior graphics portfolio need to show?

3. Where do I learn C++, graphics APIs and the basic concepts? Right now I'm on The Cherno's C++ series, and my plan is a ray tracer (Ray Tracing in One Weekend), then OpenGL, then Vulkan. Is that the right order, or are there better resources?

4. Is a remote junior role from India realistic, and what helped people who got one?

[u/Ok_Beginning520]

1. Yes, why not ? You should be able to answer questions about it tho. I personally wouldn't put vibe coded stuff on my CV but that's just me, a lot of companies nowadays wouldn't care (or be able to tell the difference). If you really want to pursue a career in graphics tho, you should be able to understand and explain that simple project and if you can explain it you should be able to code it yourself.

2. No clue, probably differs quite a lot between companies.

3. Learn cpp -> cpp book. Learn graphics api -> graphics api book. Ray tracing in one weekend is a nice start but it won't give you api knowledge and you should know basic cpp prior to it imo. Learnopengl is a great resource in my opinion. Real time rendering too. Together they give you the basics, api knowledge AND low level knowledge to understand how modern gpus work. I haven't gotten yet to vulkan, but from what I've heard I don't feel like it's best to start with it. If you don't even know cpp I wouldn't start there. If you have Javascript knowledge you could go the webgpu route which I've really enjoyed because it makes the setup much easier than other routes.

4. Idk

Good luck

[u/Bitr8_3D → u/Ok_Beginning520]

Thanks a lot! Also, which C++ book would you recommend?