Introducing the Raptor Engine and Hydra

When we set out to write this book, we decided our goal was to start where a traditional Vulkan tutorial might end. There are plenty of great resources, both in print and on the web, that help beginners discover and understand the Vulkan API.

We decided to write this book as we felt there was a gap between these introductory tutorials and some of the more advanced material. Some of these topics might be covered in articles and blog posts, but we couldn’t find a resource that organized them in a single and cohesive format.

While we assume some familiarity with Vulkan, in this chapter, we take the opportunity to go over some of the basic concepts that we will build upon throughout the remainder of the book. We will present the code organization and the classes and libraries that we use throughout the book.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• How to read this book
• Understanding the code structure
• Understanding the glTF scene format
• Physically based rendering in a nutshell
• A word on GPU debugging

By the end of this chapter, you will be familiar with the Raptor Engine and the rendering framework we developed for this book. You will have also learned the structure of the glTF model format and the base concepts behind physically based rendering.