Vookoo 2.0

Vookoo is a set of dependency-free utilities to assist in the construction and updating of Vulkan graphics data structures.

To compile example codes, use the CMakeLists.txt in the root of the distribution. On unix machines (Linux/Mac OS X), the following will compile the examples:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Documentation:

classes

Shaders modules are easy to construct:

vku::ShaderModule vert_{device, BINARY_DIR "helloTriangle.vert.spv"};
vku::ShaderModule frag_{device, BINARY_DIR "helloTriangle.frag.spv"};

Pipelines can be built with a few lines of code compared to many hundreds in the C and C++ libraries

vku::PipelineMaker pm{(uint32_t)width, (uint32_t)height};
pm.shader(vk::ShaderStageFlagBits::eVertex, vert_);
pm.shader(vk::ShaderStageFlagBits::eFragment, frag_);
pm.vertexBinding(0, (uint32_t)sizeof(Vertex));
pm.vertexAttribute(0, 0, vk::Format::eR32G32Sfloat, (uint32_t)offsetof(Vertex, pos));
pm.vertexAttribute(1, 0, vk::Format::eR32G32B32Sfloat, (uint32_t)offsetof(Vertex, colour));

Textures are easy to construct and upload:

// Create an image, memory and view for the texture on the GPU.
vku::TextureImage2D texture{device, fw.memprops(), 2, 2, vk::Format::eR8G8B8A8Unorm};

// Create an image and memory for the texture on the CPU.
vku::TextureImage2D stagingBuffer{device, fw.memprops(), 2, 2, vk::Format::eR8G8B8A8Unorm, true};

// Copy pixels into the staging buffer
static const uint8_t pixels[] = { 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,  0x00, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,  0xff, 0x00, 0xff, 0xff,  0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0xff, };
stagingBuffer.update(device, (const void*)pixels, 4);

// Copy the staging buffer to the GPU texture and set the layout.
vku::executeImmediately(device, window.commandPool(), fw.graphicsQueue(), [&](vk::CommandBuffer cb) {
  texture.copy(cb, stagingBuffer);
  texture.setLayout(cb, vk::ImageLayout::eShaderReadOnlyOptimal);
});

// Free the staging buffer.
stagingBuffer = vku::TextureImage2D{};

It is derived from the excellent projects of Sascha Willems, Alexander Overvoorde and Khronos for Vulkan-Hpp project.

[https://github.com/SaschaWillems/Vulkan]

[https://github.com/Overv/VulkanTutorial]

[https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Hpp]

Vookoo adds a "vku" namespace to the "vk" namespace of the C++ interface and provides user friendly interfacs for building pipelines and other Vulkan data structures.

The aim of this project is to make Vulkan programming as easy as OpenGL. Vulkan is known for immensely verbose data structures and exacting rules but this can be mitigated but providing classes to help the construction of Vulkan resources.

If you want to contribute to Vookoo, please send me some pull requests. I will post some work areas that could do with improvement.

History

Vookoo1.0 was an earlier project that did much the same thing but acted as a "Layer" on top of the C interface. Because it was duplicating much of the work of Vulkan-Hpp, we decided to replace it with the new Vookoo interface. The old one is still around if you want to use it.

Library

Currently the library consists of two header files:

vku.hpp            The library itself
vku_framework.hpp  An easy framework for running the examples

If you have an existing game engine then vku can be used with no dependencies.

If you are learning Vulkan, the framework library provides window services by way of glfw3.

The repository contains all the files needed to build the examples, but you may also use the headers stand-alone, for example with Android builds.

Examples

There are currently these examples (in order of complexity)

Simple examples
helloTriangle   Draw a triangle using vertex buffers
pushConstants   Draw a rotating triangle
texture         Draw a textured triangle

Complex examples    
teapot          Draw the Utah teapot with cube map reflections
molvoo          A molecular viewer for very large complexes

To build, you will need the Vulkan SDK from LunarG:

https://www.lunarg.com/vulkan-sdk/

Once installed, check that the GLSL compiler works:

$ glslangValidator

Building the examples on Windows:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G "Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64" ..\examples
VookooExamples.sln

Building the examples on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libxrandr-dev glslang-dev glslang-tools mesa-common-dev
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../examples
make

Please give feedback if these setting do not work for you.