This repo contains a Vulkan rendering engine built around a rendergraph architecture.

This serves as a sandbox for experimenting with rendering algorithms and architecture, while also doubling as a portfolio piece. It is actively being worked on, and both features and architecture are still evolving.

Screenshots:

Features:

It has the following features:

• Rendergraph - Manages pass ordering, image layout transitions, and barrier insertion. Features declare their resource requirements and the rendergraph handles all synchronisation. This means features never issue their own barriers.
• Feature-based architecture - Rendering techniques are self-contained modules that implement an IFeature interface. Each feature registers its passes with the rendergraph builder using a setup/execute lambda pattern.
• PBR shading - Metallic-roughness workflow with baseColor and metallicRoughness texture loading from GLTF files. Uses sRGB-correct linear workflow with ACES filmic tonemapping.
• MSAA - 4x multisample anti-aliasing with rendergraph-managed resolve targets. MSAA color and depth are separate tracked images that resolve into the draw image.
• GLTF scene loading - Mesh and light node support via fastgltf. Lights are passed to shaders through storage buffers. For now, this is the only way to load scenes/meshes into the renderer.
• GPU profiling - Per-pass timestamp queries measuring GPU time, with results read back from a previous frame to avoid CPU-GPU stalls. Displayed through an ImGui overlay.
• Bindless vertex fetching - Mesh buffer addresses are passed to shaders via buffer device addresses (BDA) through push constants, bypassing the traditional fixed-function vertex input pipeline.
• Dynamic rendering - Uses Vulkan 1.3's dynamic rendering. No render pass objects or framebuffers.

To-do list:

• Deferred Rendering - This is WIP
• Clustered shading - This is WIP, dependent on Deferred rendering
• SMAA - This is WIP
• Rendergraph dependency tracking with automatic pass ordering and culling
• Transient image management (rendergraph-owned, auto-resized per frame)
• Async compute for overlapping independent passes

(This is not exhaustive)

Build and run:

SPIR-V shader compilation is integrated into the CMake build. No additional shader tooling setup is required.

cmake -B build -G Ninja
cmake --build build

Requirements:

• Vulkan 1.3 (dynamic rendering, synchronization2)
• C++ compiler
• CMake with Ninja generator

All other dependencies are vendored into the repository:

• VMA (Vulkan Memory Allocator)
• SDL
• GLM
• fastgltf
• Dear ImGui
• VkBootstrap

(This is not exhaustive)

References:

• https://vkguide.dev/ - Foundational reference for the engine's Vulkan architecture.
• https://logins.github.io/graphics/2021/05/31/RenderGraphs.html - Rendergraphs.
• https://www.iryoku.com/smaa/ - SMAA Reference.

And more to be added eventually!