Baike.dev
All toolsOnline toolsAI codingTrendingOpen sourceNewsSubmit
Log in
< Back to tools
N

niagara

> 编程语言
Open source

A Vulkan renderer written from scratch on stream

1.8K stars0 likes1 views
WebsiteGitHub

About

A Vulkan renderer written from scratch on stream

Niagara

This is a Vulkan renderer that is written on stream from scratch - without using any third party code that is Vulkan specific. We are using non-Vulkan-specific third party libraries however.

The goal is to experiment with a few modern Vulkan rendering techniques, such as GPU culling & scene submission, cone culling, automatic occlusion culling, task/mesh shading, and whatever else it is that we will want to experiment with. The code will be written on stream.

Requirements

The renderer was originally written using Visual Studio and targeted Windows desktops with modern Vulkan drivers. Since then the development platform has switched to Linux, but you can still build and run it on Windows - via CMake.

Building

To build and run the project, clone this repository using --recursive flag:

bash
git clone https://github.com/zeux/niagara --recursive

Make sure you have Vulkan 1.4 SDK and drivers installed; open the folder niagara in Visual Studio (as a CMake project) and build it. On Linux, you can use CMake with your build generator of choice.

To run the program, command line should contain arguments with paths to .obj files or a .gltf scene; you can use kitten.obj from data/ folder for testing.

To use Amazon Lumberyard Bistro scene, clone https://github.com/zeux/niagara_bistro and specify path to bistro.gltf instead.

Stream

The development of this project is streamed on YouTube, on Saturdays at 11 AM PST with a somewhat irregular schedule.

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0JVLUVCkk-l7CWCn3-cdftR0oajugYvd

  1. Setting up instance/device and filling the screen with a solid color: https://youtu.be/BR2my8OE1Sc
  2. Rendering a triangle on screen: https://youtu.be/5eS3gsL_P-c
  3. Cleaning up validation errors and implementing swapchain resize: https://youtu.be/_VU-G5rglnA
  4. Rendering a mesh using shader storage buffers and int8: https://youtu.be/nKCzD5iK71M
  5. Rendering a mesh using NVidia RTX mesh shading pipeline: https://youtu.be/gbeOKMjmQ-g
  6. Optimizing GPU time by using device-local memory and parallelizing mesh shader: https://youtu.be/ayKoqK3kQ9c
  7. Using descriptor update templates and parsing SPIRV to extract reflection data: https://youtu.be/3Py4GlWAicY
  8. Cluster cone culling using task shaders and subgroup ops: https://youtu.be/KckRq7Rm3Mw
  9. Tuning mesh shading pipeline for performance: https://youtu.be/snZkA4D_qjU
  10. Depth buffer, perspective projection, 3D transforms and multi draw indirect: https://youtu.be/y4WOsAaXLh0
  11. Multiple meshes and GPU frustum culling: https://youtu.be/NGGzk4Fi2iU
  12. Draw call compaction using KHR_draw_indirect_count and LOD support: https://youtu.be/IYRgDcnJJ2I
  13. Depth pyramid construction and extending SPIRV reflection parser: https://youtu.be/YCteLdYdZWQ
  14. Automatic occlusion culling: https://youtu.be/Fj1E1A4CPCM
  15. Vulkan 1.2 and GPU buffer pointers: https://youtu.be/78tVIA6nRQg
  16. Upgrading to Vulkan 1.3: https://youtu.be/Ka30T6BMdhI
  17. Implementing triangle culling: https://youtu.be/JKTfAgv3Vlo
  18. Meshlet occlusion culling: https://youtu.be/5sBpo5wKmEM
  19. Optimizing culling: https://youtu.be/1Tj6bZvZMts
  20. Task command submission: https://youtu.be/eYvGruGHhUE
  21. Cluster compute culling: https://youtu.be/zROUBE5pLuI
  22. Loading glTF scenes: https://youtu.be/9OF6k57orXo
  23. Bindless textures: https://youtu.be/n9nqSEyXMeA
  24. Tracing rays: https://youtu.be/N1OVfBEcyb8
  25. Tracing rays faster: https://youtu.be/U7TGQsjT16E
  26. Materials and shadows: https://youtu.be/iZTUjRntMbM
  27. Transparent shadows: https://youtu.be/233jxF7irmE
  28. Moving objects: https://youtu.be/TcuUz1ib35c
  29. Performance nsights: https://youtu.be/qlxrRyRdOcY
  30. Simplifying synchronization: https://youtu.be/0rqWe1M2HiE
  31. Cooking geometry: https://youtu.be/d04h0sZPwFU
  32. Descriptor heaps: https://youtu.be/VXN4Gewjk4k
  33. Opacity micromaps: https://youtu.be/gVIHXWI1BQY

Issues

During the streams we find various bugs in parts of the Vulkan stack and report them; bugs marked with ✔️ have been fixed.

  • ✔️ vkAcquireNextImageKHR crashes in validation layers if vkGetSwapchainImagesKHR hasn't been called
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/358

  • ✔️ vkGetPhysicalDeviceSurfaceFormatsKHR doesn't fill format count correctly
    https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/graphics-driver-bug-reporting/topic/797666

  • ✔️ Fix NonWritable check when vertexPipelineStoresAndAtomics not enabled
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/73

  • ✔️ Implicit int8->float cast adds Int8 capability to the shader without asking for GL_KHX_shader_explicit_arithmetic_types
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/1525

  • ⁉ vkCreateSwapchainKHR crashes in Intel drivers when display is plugged into a dedicated GPU
    https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/graphics-driver-bug-reporting/topic/797756

  • ✔️ Reading uint8_t from storage buffers adds (unnecessarily) UniformAndStorageBuffer8BitAccess capability
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/1539

  • ✔️ Binding a buffer with VK_BUFFER_USAGE_VERTEX_BUFFER_BIT as a storage buffer using push descriptors doesn't produce validation errors
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/413

  • ✔️ Fragment shader with perprimitiveNV doesn't have OpExtension SPV_NV_mesh_shader
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/1541

  • ✔️ GL_NV_mesh_shader spec typo for per-primitive fragment shader inputs
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/GLSL/issues/31

  • ✔️ Push descriptors generate false positive DescriptorSetNotBound errors
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/341

  • ✔️ vkCmdDrawIndexedIndirect doesn't issue an error when the buffer wasn't created with VK_BUFFER_USAGE_INDIRECT_BUFFER_BIT
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/450

  • ✔️ vkCmdDrawMeshTasksIndirectNV doesn't trigger an error when multiDrawIndirect feature is disabled
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/451

  • ✔️ vkCmdDrawIndexedIndirect is rendering fewer than drawCount draw calls on Intel
    Reproduce using https://github.com/zeux/niagara/commit/fda3d8743c933fb3a533fed560a6671402d6693b

  • ✔️ vkCmdDrawIndexedIndirectCountKHR is causing a GPU crash on Intel
    Reproduce using https://github.com/zeux/niagara/commit/c22c2c56d06249835a474e370ea3218463721f42

  • ✔️ Crash during Vulkan replay in push descriptor replay
    https://github.com/baldurk/renderdoc/issues/1182

  • ✔️ NVidia GTX 10xx series GPUs cause VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST when drawCount is 1'000'000
    Reproduce using https://github.com/zeux/niagara/commit/8d69552aede9c429765c8c8afd6687d3f3e53475

  • ✔️ AMD drivers 18.11.2 on Windows don't handle specialization constants correctly
    Using specialization constant LATE in drawcull.comp.glsl leads to no objects being rendered on screen after the first frame

  • ✔️ During validation of pipelines with SPIRV 1.4/1.5 and specialization constants, optimizer isn't configured to use Vulkan 1.2
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/1512

  • ✔️ Crash when calling vkCmdDrawIndexedIndirectCount loaded through GIPA
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/1513

  • ✔️ SHADER_MODULE_STATE::has_specialization_constants is not initialized
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/1530

  • ✔️ Missing validation: push descriptor updates don't trigger image layout mismatch errors
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/1862

  • ✔️ A valid interface block in mesh/task shader is considered invalid
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Tools/issues/3653

  • ✔️ Usage of any fields of gl_MeshPrimitivesEXT is enabling capability FragmentShadingRateKHR even if gl_PrimitiveShadingRateEXT is not used
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/3103

  • ✔️ Incomplete mip data is encoded for non-power-of-two textures
    https://github.com/wolfpld/etcpak/pull/43

  • ✔️ radv should use pointer flags on RDNA3 during BVH traversal
    https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/32417

  • radv: VK_BUILD_ACCELERATION_STRUCTURE_MODE_UPDATE_KHR is not supported for TLAS
    https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/12346

  • ✔️ Missing synchronization validation for ray tracing acceleration updates & uses
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/9076

  • ✔️ anv: Mesh shaders with two OpSetMeshOutputsEXT instructions are not supported
    https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/12388

  • ✔️ vkCmdBuildClusterAccelerationStructureIndirectNV(): pCommandInfos->srcInfosCount may be zero
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Docs/issues/2606

  • ✔️ vkCmdBuildClusterAccelerationStructureIndirectNV(): pCommandInfos->srcInfosArray.stride may be zero
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/10975

  • ✔️ Missing validation for descriptor heap binding clobber
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/11688

  • ✔️ VUID-RuntimeSpirv-MeshEXT-10883 makes specialization constant based task shader usage invalid retroactively
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Docs/issues/2677

  • Missing index offset alignment validation for opacity micromaps
    https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-ValidationLayers/issues/11973

Issues· 0 open

View all issuesOpen on GitHub

No open issues yet, or sync has not completed.

> Tags

C++vulkan

No comments yet. Be the first to share.

> Details

PublishedAug 1, 2026
UpdatedSep 17, 2026
Category编程语言
PricingOpen source

> Related tools

T
TypeScript
JavaScript 的超集，为前端与全栈提供静态类型
P
Python
通用编程语言，广泛用于 Web、数据与 AI
G
Go
Google 推出的简洁高效系统语言