Mastering Graphics Programming with Vulkan

Develop a rendering framework in this part-color guide by implementing next-generation 3D graphics, leveraging advanced Vulkan features, and getting familiar with efficient real-time ray tracing techniques uncovered by leading industry veterans, Marco Castorina and Gabriel Sassone
Key Features:
- Use a pre-built "Raptor" engine to abstract tedious aspects like file systems, memory allocation, and utility functions
- Delve into advanced graphics programming by taking advantage of Vulkan's cutting-edge features, including mesh shaders and ray tracing
- Optimize your engine without reinventing the wheel
- Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook
Book Description:
Vulkan is now an established and flexible multi-platform graphics API. It has been adopted in many industries, including game development, medical imaging, movie productions, and media playback but learning it can be a daunting challenge due to its low-level, complex nature. Mastering Graphics Programming with Vulkan is designed to help you overcome this difficulty, providing a practical approach to learning one of the most advanced graphics APIs.
In Mastering Graphics Programming with Vulkan, you'll focus on building a high-performance rendering engine from the ground up. You'll explore Vulkan's advanced features, such as pipeline layouts, resource barriers, and GPU-driven rendering, to automate tedious tasks and create efficient workflows. Additionally, you'll delve into cutting-edge techniques like mesh shaders and real-time ray tracing, elevating your graphics programming to the next level.
By the end of this book, you'll have a thorough understanding of modern rendering engines to confidently handle large-scale projects. Whether you're developing games, simulations, or visual effects, this guide will equip you with the skills and knowledge to harness Vulkan's full potential.
What You Will Learn:
- Understand resources management and modern bindless techniques
- Get comfortable with how a frame graph works and know its advantages
- Explore how to render efficiently with many light sources
- Discover how to integrate variable rate shading
- Understand the benefits and limitations of temporal anti-aliasing
- Get to grips with how GPU-driven rendering works
- Explore and leverage ray tracing to improve render quality
Who this book is for:
This book is for professional graphics and game developers who want to gain in-depth knowledge about how to write a modern and performant rendering engine in Vulkan. Familiarity with basic concepts of graphics programming (i.e. matrices, vectors, etc.) and fundamental knowledge of Vulkan are required.
Table of Contents
- Introducing the Raptor Engine and Hydra
- Improving Resources Management
- Unlocking Multi-Threading
- Implementing a Frame Graph
- Unlocking Async Compute
- GPU-Driven Rendering
- Rendering Many Lights with Clustered Deferred Rendering
- Adding Shadows Using Mesh Shaders
- Implementing Variable Rate Shading
- Adding Volumetric Fog
- Temporal Anti-Aliasing
- Getting Started with Ray Tracing
- Revisiting Shadows with Ray Tracing
- Adding Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination with Ray Tracing
- Adding Reflections with Ray Tracing