Methane Kit

Easy to use modern 3D graphics rendering abstraction API and cross-platform application framework:

• Builds on top of modern native 3D graphics APIs: DirectX 12 on Windows, Vulkan on Linux, Metal on macOS, iOS & tvOS.
• Simplifies modern graphics programming with an object-oriented medium-level graphics API inspired by the simplicity of Apple Metal. Common shaders code in HLSL 6 is used on all platforms.
• Provides a cross-platform application framework with a CMake build toolchain, platform-independent application foundation classes, and a native-GUI layer for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Download release builds with pre-built samples, tutorials, and tests to try them out. Check the latest build status, tests, code coverage, and analysis results or get build artifacts from GitHub Actions CI and Sonar Cloud. See the Build Instructions topic for manual build instructions and start learning the Methane Graphics RHI API with Hello Triangle and other tutorials’ documentation.

Platform	Graphics API	Master Build	Develop Build
Windows x64	DirectX 12
Windows x86	DirectX 12
Windows x64	Vulkan
Windows x86	Vulkan
Linux	Vulkan
MacOS	Vulkan
MacOS	Metal
iOS (Sim)	Metal
tvOS (Sim)	Metal

Static code analysis scans are performed as a part of automated CI build process on master and develop branches with up-to-date results published on Sonar Cloud.

Platform	Sonar Quality Gate	Master Scan Status	Develop Scan Status
Windows DirectX
Linux Vulkan
MacOS Metal

Asteroids sample demonstrating multi-threaded rendering with Methane Kit

Build Instructions

• Prerequisites
• Fetch Sources
• • Notes
• First time initialization
• Update sources to latest revision
• Building from Sources
  • Windows Build with Visual Studio
  • Linux Build with Unix Makefiles
  • MacOS Build with XCode
  • iOS and tvOS Build with XCode
• CMake Generator
  • CMake Options
  • CMake Presets

Getting Started

High-Level Architecture

Methane Kit architecture is clearly distributing library modules between 5 layers from low to high level of abstraction.

Rendering Hardware Interface (RHI)

Methane Graphics RHI module implements a set of public object-oriented interfaces, which make modern graphics programming easy and convenient in a platform and API independent way.

Tutorials

Start learning Methane Graphics API with Hello Triangle tutorial documentation and continue with others.

Name / Link	Screenshot	Description
1. Hello Triangle		Colored triangle rendering in 100 lines of code.
2. Hello Cube		Colored cube rendering in 200 lines of code with vertex and index buffers.
3. Textured Cube		Textured cube introduces buffers, textures and samplers usage with Phong shading.
4. Shadow Cube		Shadow cube introduces multi-pass rendering with render passes.
5. Typography		Typography demonstrates animated text rendering with dynamic font atlas updates using Methane UI.
6. Cube-Map Array		Cube-map array texturing along with sky-box rendering.
7. Parallel Rendering		Parallel rendering of the textured cube instances to the single render pass.
8. Console Compute		Conway’s Game of Life implemented in Compute Shader and running in pure console application.

Samples

Methane samples demonstrate advanced techniques and usage scenarios with more complex implementation than tutorials above. Samples are distributes in form of separate repositories.

Name / Link	Screenshot	Description
Asteroids		Benchmark demonstrating parallel render commands encoding in a single render pass for the large number of heterogeneous asteroid objects processed in multiple threads.

Features

• Cross-platform application & input classes: Supports Windows, macOS, and Linux
  • CMake modules for convenient application build configuration, adding shaders, and embedding resources
  • HLSL-6 Shaders serving all graphics APIs, converted to native shader language and compiled at build time with SPIRV-Cross & DirectXCompiler
  • HLSL++ Math library with HLSL-like syntax in C++ and vector-instruction optimizations for different platforms
• Modern Graphics API abstractions: based on DirectX 12, Vulkan and Metal APIs
  • Render state and program configuration with compact initialization syntax
  • Program binding objects implement efficient binding of shader arguments to resources
  • Automatic resource state tracking for automatic resource transition barriers setup
  • Resources are automatically retained from destruction while in use on GPU with shared pointers in command list state
  • Command list execution state tracking with optional GPU timestamps query on completion
  • Parallel render command list for multi-threaded render commands encoding in a single render pass
  • Multiple command queues execution on GPU with synchronization using fences
  • Private GPU resources asynchronously updated through the upload command list and shared resource
  • Registry of named graphics objects enabling reuse of render states and graphics resources between renderer objects
• Graphics primitives and extensions:
  • Graphics application base class with per-frame resource management and frame buffers resizing enabling effective triple buffering
  • Camera primitive and interactive arc-ball camera
  • Procedural mesh generation for quad, box, sphere, icosahedron, and uber-mesh
  • Screen-quad and sky-box rendering extension classes
  • Texture loader (currently implemented with STB, planned for replacement with OpenImageIO)
• User Interface:
  • UI application base class with integrated HUD, logo badge, and help/parameters text panels
  • Typography library for font loading, dynamic atlas updating, text rendering, and layout
  • Widgets library (under development)
• Platform Infrastructure:
  • Base application with window management and input handling for Windows, macOS, and Linux
  • Events mechanism connecting emitters and receivers via callback interfaces
  • Animations subsystem
  • Embedded resource providers
• Integrated debugging and profiling capabilities:
  • Library instrumentation for performance analysis with trace profiling tools
  • Debug names for all GPU objects and debug regions for graphics API calls for use with frame profiling tools
• Continuous integration with automated multi-platform builds, unit tests, and Sonar Cloud static code analysis

For detailed features description and development plans please refer to Modules documentation.

Supported Development Tools

Development Environments

• Jet Brains CLion (pre-configured with .idea)
• Microsoft VS Code and GitPod (pre-configured with CMakePresets.json and .vscode/settings.json)
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2022
  • Solutions and projects build (generate with Build/Windows/Build.bat)
  • CMake native build support (pre-configured with CMakePresets.json)
• Apple XCode
  • XCode workspace and projects (generate with Build/Unix/Build.sh)
• Qt Creator with CMake native support

Static Code Analysis

Methane Kit comes with continuous C++ static code and code coverage analysis performed as a part of automated CI “Scan” builds with up-to-date results published on Sonar Cloud separately for all supported platforms.

Master Scan Results	Windows	MacOS	Linux
Scan Build Status
Quality Gate
Maintainability
Reliability
Security
Technical Debt
Bugs
Vulnerabilities
Code Smells
Duplicated Lines
Tests Coverage
Lines of Code

Trace Profiling Tools

Methane Kit contains integrated instrumentation of all libraries for performance analysis with trace collection using following tools. Please refer to Methane Instrumentation document for more details on trace collection instructions and related build options.

Tracy Frame Profiler	Intel Graphics Trace Analyzer

Frame Profiling and Debugging Tools

• Intel Graphics Frame Analyzer
• Apple XCode Metal Debugger
• RenderDoc
• Microsoft PIX
• NVidia Nsight Graphics

External Dependencies

• Libraries
• Build Tools
• Assets

License

Methane Kit is distributed under Apache 2.0 License: it is free to use and open for contributions!

Copyright 2019-2022 © Evgeny Gorodetskiy