Purpose

Project for studying Vulkan and a general rendering engine playground for myself.

Building (⚠IN PROGRESS⚠)

• This project has a few moving pieces to it:
  • vk_study: This is the executable that actually contains the Vulkan rendering engine. It mostly uses a unity build system. Meaning, all #includes are in a single place (vk_study.h) and most of the project is compiled all at once through the compilation of vk_study.cpp alone.
  • asset_baker: This executable is responsible for massaging assets in external formats into a format that the vk_study executable can then directly load into memory. The idea is that we "bake" the assets into a format that is exactly how we want to consume them. This avoids the need to parse or arrange assets during runtime of vk_study. This executable also partitions the information about external file formats away from the rest of the project. Removing dependencies from vk_study.
    • External formats include: .jpg, .png, .tga, .gltf, .glb, .obj
  • Some source files are compiled separately as static libraries:
    • assetlib: This library contains the definitions of the custom asset file formats. It defines how the structure of the custom assets, implements saving/compressing and loading/decompressing. This library is the communication line between asset_baker and vk_study.
    • noop_math: Custom math library originating from NoopScenes project
  • sdl2_DIR environment variable in third_party/CMakeLists.txt must be set to the SDL2 library path
    • Ex: "C:/developer/dependencies/libs/SDL2-2.0.18"

Running (⚠IN PROGRESS⚠)

• Ensure that the working directory when running vk_study or vk_baker is the root directory of the project.
• vk_baker takes two command line string arguments.
  • Argument 1: Directory of the assets
  • Argument 2: Directory of include file metadata output
  • Ex: asset_baker.exe assets/ assets_metadata/
• SDL2.dll must be placed in same directory as vk_study.exe.

Example Render

This render demonstrates the current capabilities of drawing ~36,000 cubes with a ShaderToy-esque background.

Dependencies

• Dear Imgui for debugging GUIs
• stb (image/image_write) for loading image files
• syoyo's tinygltf for loading 3D files (gltf/glb)
• tinyobjloader for loading 3D files (obj)
• vk-bootstrap for simplifying Vulkan initialization
• VulkanMemoryAllocator for simplifying the management of Vulkan images/buffers
• LZ4 for compressing/decompressing custom asset files
• nlohmann's json for custom asset file headers
• SPIRV-Reflect for reflection on GLSL shaders

Special Thanks

• vblanco20-1 and their fantastic Vulkan Guide
• Sascha Willems and his amazing Vulkan education contributions everywhere you look.
• Graphics Programming Discord
• /r/vulkan