POV-Ray, perhaps? You give it a scene description text file and it will render a raytraced image of the scene for you. You'd need to find or write an appropriate scene description though for what you want to randomize.
Thanks for the suggestion, but that's not the one.
I've wasted so much time writing scenes for that thing and rendering them on my mighty 486...
Still got any fun renders from back then?
No, I wish I did, but they disappeared many computers ago.
Nope, it's all gone to the great bit bucket in the sky...
Looks interesting, but that's also not what I'm looking for. Thanks though!
I also thought it would be povray as this is what I was using on linux over two decades ago. Maybe this list could help you:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ray_tracing_software
Could it perhaps have been Bryce 3D?
No, this was (from memory) a console application only. You specified output size, maybe a couple seed values, and the process after that was random.
a community for posting cool tech news you don’t want to sneer at
non-awfulness of tech is not required or else we wouldn’t have any posts