Book Image

Vulkan Cookbook

By : Pawel Lapinski
Book Image

Vulkan Cookbook

By: Pawel Lapinski

Overview of this book

Vulkan is the next generation graphics API released by the Khronos group. It is expected to be the successor to OpenGL and OpenGL ES, which it shares some similarities with such as its cross-platform capabilities, programmed pipeline stages, or nomenclature. Vulkan is a low-level API that gives developers much more control over the hardware, but also adds new responsibilities such as explicit memory and resources management. With it, though, Vulkan is expected to be much faster. This book is your guide to understanding Vulkan through a series of recipes. We start off by teaching you how to create instances in Vulkan and choose the device on which operations will be performed. You will then explore more complex topics such as command buffers, resources and memory management, pipelines, GLSL shaders, render passes, and more. Gradually, the book moves on to teach you advanced rendering techniques, how to draw 3D scenes, and how to improve the performance of your applications. By the end of the book, you will be familiar with the latest advanced techniques implemented with the Vulkan API, which can be used on a wide range of platforms.

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Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Sections
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
Instance and Devices
Instance and Devices
Introduction
Downloading Vulkan's SDK
Enabling validation layers
Connecting with a Vulkan Loader library
Preparing for loading Vulkan API functions
Loading functions exported from a Vulkan Loader library
Loading global-level functions
Checking available Instance extensions
Creating a Vulkan Instance
Loading instance-level functions
Enumerating available physical devices
Checking available device extensions
Getting features and properties of a physical device
Checking available queue families and their properties
Selecting the index of a queue family with the desired capabilities
Creating a logical device
Loading device-level functions
Getting a device queue
Creating a logical device with geometry shaders, graphics, and compute queues
Destroying a logical device
Destroying a Vulkan Instance
Releasing a Vulkan Loader library
2
Image Presentation
Image Presentation
Introduction
Creating a Vulkan Instance with WSI extensions enabled
Creating a presentation surface
Selecting a queue family that supports presentation to a given surface
Creating a logical device with WSI extensions enabled
Selecting a desired presentation mode
Getting the capabilities of a presentation surface
Selecting a number of swapchain images
Choosing a size of swapchain images
Selecting desired usage scenarios of swapchain images
Selecting a transformation of swapchain images
Selecting a format of swapchain images
Creating a swapchain
Getting handles of swapchain images
Creating a swapchain with R8G8B8A8 format and a mailbox present mode
Acquiring a swapchain image
Presenting an image
Destroying a swapchain
Destroying a presentation surface
3
Command Buffers and Synchronization
Command Buffers and Synchronization
Introduction
Creating a command pool
Allocating command buffers
Beginning a command buffer recording operation
Ending a command buffer recording operation
Resetting a command buffer
Resetting a command pool
Creating a semaphore
Creating a fence
Waiting for fences
Resetting fences
Submitting command buffers to a queue
Synchronizing two command buffers
Checking if processing of a submitted command buffer has finished
Waiting until all commands submitted to a queue are finished
Waiting for all submitted commands to be finished
Destroying a fence
Destroying a semaphore
Freeing command buffers
Destroying a command pool
4
Resources and Memory
Resources and Memory
Introduction
Creating a buffer
Allocating and binding a memory object for a buffer
Setting a buffer memory barrier
Creating a buffer view
Creating an image
Allocating and binding a memory object to an image
Setting an image memory barrier
Creating an image view
Creating a 2D image and view
Creating a layered 2D image with a CUBEMAP view
Mapping, updating and unmapping host-visible memory
Copying data between buffers
Copying data from a buffer to an image
Copying data from an image to a buffer
Using a staging buffer to update a buffer with a device-local memory bound
Using a staging buffer to update an image with a device-local memory bound
Destroying an image view
Destroying an image
Destroying a buffer view
Freeing a memory object
Destroying a buffer
5
Descriptor Sets
Descriptor Sets
Introduction
Creating a sampler
Creating a sampled image
Creating a combined image sampler
Creating a storage image
Creating a uniform texel buffer
Creating a storage texel buffer
Creating a uniform buffer
Creating a storage buffer
Creating an input attachment
Creating a descriptor set layout
Creating a descriptor pool
Allocating descriptor sets
Updating descriptor sets
Binding descriptor sets
Creating descriptors with a texture and a uniform buffer
Freeing descriptor sets
Resetting a descriptor pool
Destroying a descriptor pool
Destroying a descriptor set layout
Destroying a sampler
6
Render Passes and Framebuffers
Render Passes and Framebuffers
Introduction
Specifying attachments descriptions
Specifying subpass descriptions
Specifying dependencies between subpasses
Creating a render pass
Creating a framebuffer
Preparing a render pass for geometry rendering and postprocess subpasses
Preparing a render pass and a framebuffer with color and depth attachments
Beginning a render pass
Progressing to the next subpass
Ending a render pass
Destroying a framebuffer
Destroying a render pass
7
Shaders
Shaders
Introduction
Converting GLSL shaders to SPIR-V assemblies
Writing vertex shaders
Writing tessellation control shaders
Writing tessellation evaluation shaders
Writing geometry shaders
Writing fragment shaders
Writing compute shaders
Writing a vertex shader that multiplies vertex position by a projection matrix
Using push constants in shaders
Writing texturing vertex and fragment shaders
Displaying polygon normals with a geometry shader
8
Graphics and Compute Pipelines
Graphics and Compute Pipelines
Introduction
Creating a shader module
Specifying pipeline shader stages
Specifying a pipeline vertex binding description, attribute description, and input state
Specifying a pipeline input assembly state
Specifying a pipeline tessellation state
Specifying a pipeline viewport and scissor test state
Specifying a pipeline rasterization state
Specifying a pipeline multisample state
Specifying a pipeline depth and stencil state
Specifying a pipeline blend state
Specifying pipeline dynamic states
Creating a pipeline layout
Specifying graphics pipeline creation parameters
Creating a pipeline cache object
Retrieving data from a pipeline cache
Merging multiple pipeline cache objects
Creating a graphics pipeline
Creating a compute pipeline
Binding a pipeline object
Creating a pipeline layout with a combined image sampler, a buffer, and push constant ranges
Creating a graphics pipeline with vertex and fragment shaders, depth test enabled, and with dynamic viewport and scissor tests
Creating multiple graphics pipelines on multiple threads
Destroying a pipeline
Destroying a pipeline cache
Destroying a pipeline layout
Destroying a shader module
9
Command Recording and Drawing
Command Recording and Drawing
Introduction
Clearing a color image
Clearing a depth-stencil image
Clearing render pass attachments
Binding vertex buffers
Binding an index buffer
Providing data to shaders through push constants
Setting viewport states dynamically
Setting scissor states dynamically
Setting line width states dynamically
Setting depth bias states dynamically
Setting blend constants states dynamically
Drawing a geometry
Drawing an indexed geometry
Dispatching compute work
Executing a secondary command buffer inside a primary command buffer
Recording a command buffer that draws a geometry with dynamic viewport and scissor states
Recording command buffers on multiple threads
Preparing a single frame of animation
Increasing the performance through increasing the number of separately rendered frames
10
Helper Recipes
Helper Recipes
Introduction
Preparing a translation matrix
Preparing a rotation matrix
Preparing a scaling matrix
Preparing a perspective projection matrix
Preparing an orthographic projection matrix
Loading texture data from a file
Loading a 3D model from an OBJ file
11
Lighting
Lighting
Introduction
Rendering a geometry with a vertex diffuse lighting
Rendering a geometry with a fragment specular lighting
Rendering a normal mapped geometry
Drawing a reflective and refractive geometry using cubemaps
Adding shadows to the scene
12
Advanced Rendering Techniques
Advanced Rendering Techniques
Introduction
Drawing a skybox
Drawing billboards using geometry shaders
Drawing particles using compute and graphics pipelines
Rendering a tessellated terrain
Rendering a full-screen quad for post-processing
Using input attachments for a color correction post-process effect

Getting features and properties of a physical device

When we create a Vulkan-enabled application, it can be executed on many different devices. It may be a desktop computer, a notebook, or a mobile phone. Each such device may have a different configuration, and may contain different graphics hardware that provide different performance, or, more importantly, different capabilities. A given computer may have more than one graphics card installed. So, in order to find a device that suits our needs, and is able to perform operations we want to implement in our code, we should check not only how many devices there are, but also, to be able to properly choose one of them, we need to check what the capabilities of each device are.

How to do it...

  1. Prepare the handle of the physical device returned by the vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices() function. Store it in a variable of type VkPhysicalDevice named physical_device.
  2. Create a variable of type VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures named device_features.
  3. Create a second variable of type VkPhysicalDeviceProperties named device_properties.
  4. To get the list of features supported by a given device ,call vkGetPhysicalDeviceFeatures( physical_device, &device_features ). Set the handle of the physical device returned by the
    vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices() function for the first parameter. The second parameter must point to the device_features variable.
  1. To acquire the properties of a given physical device call the vkGetPhysicalDeviceProperties( physical_device, &device_properties ) function. Provide the handle of the physical device in the first argument. This handle must have been returned by the vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices() function. The second parameter must be a pointer to a device_properties variable.

How it works...

Here you can find an implementation of the preceding recipe:

vkGetPhysicalDeviceFeatures( physical_device, &device_features ); 

vkGetPhysicalDeviceProperties( physical_device, &device_properties );

This code, while short and simple, gives us much information about the graphics hardware on which we can perform operations using the Vulkan API.

The VkPhysicalDeviceProperties structure contains general information about a given physical device. Through it, we can check the name of the device, the version of a driver, and a supported version of a Vulkan API. We can also check the type of a device: Whether it is an integrated device (built into a main processor) or a discrete (dedicated) graphics card, or maybe even a CPU itself. We can also read the limitations (limits) of a given hardware, for example, how big images (textures) can be created on it, how many buffers can be used in shaders, or we can check the upper limit of vertex attributes used during drawing operations.

The VkPhysicalDeviceFeatures structure lists additional features that may be supported by the given hardware, but are not required by the core Vulkan specification. Features include items such as geometry and tessellation shaders, depth clamp and bias, multiple viewports, or wide lines. You may wonder why geometry and tessellation shaders are on the list. Graphics hardware has supported these features for many years now. However, don't forget that the Vulkan API is portable and can be supported on many different hardware platforms, not only high-end PCs, but also mobile phones or even dedicated, portable devices, which should be as power efficient as possible. That's why these performance-hungry features are not in the core specification. This allows for some driver flexibility and, more importantly, power efficiency and lower memory consumption.

There is one additional thing you should know about the physical device features. Like extensions, they are not enabled by default and can't be used just like that. They must be implicitly enabled during the logical device creation. We can't request all features during this operation, because if there is any feature that is not supported, the logical device creation process will fail. If we are interested in a specific feature, we need to check if it is available and specify it during the creation of a logical device. If the feature is not supported, we can't use such a feature on this device and we need to look for another device that supports it.

If we want to enable all features supported by a given physical device, we just need to query for the available features and provide the acquired data during logical device creation.

See also

The following recipes in this chapter:

  • Creating a logical device
  • Creating a logical device with geometry shaders, graphics, and compute queues
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