Project Roadmap

[moneimne]

Task list to track project progress

• [ ] Load arbitrary geometry in Vulkan
• [x] Generate grass blades on geometry
• [ ] Place blades into patches
• [x] Simulate natural forces on blades
• [x] Blade state validation
• [x] Compute shader culling
• [x] Tessellation shader geometry-creation
• [ ] Collision detection
• [ ] Shadow mapping (should come with culling)
• [ ] Turn into assignment for CIS565

[moneimne]

Week 1 update: Followed the Vulkan tutorial to completion. Features include...

• General graphics pipeline generation and execution
• Loading textures
• Depth testing
• Infrastructure for loading models

Week 2 goals:

• Break up the Renderer class into multiple files
• User input to move camera
• Load glTF models

[moneimne]

Week 2 update:

• Broke up the Renderer class into more manageable files. This will continue to happen as I add to the project.
• Added camera controls
• Decided to hard code a plane for now. Will add glTF model loading once the core application starts working.
• Began creating the compute pipeline and relevant resources

Week 3 goals:

• Add necessary descriptors to get the compute pipeline running with a simple shader
• Proper grass blade generation

[moneimne]

Week 3 update:

• Added the descriptors for passing grass attributes into compute shader
• Created separate command buffer for dispatching compute shader in the compute pipeline
• Wasn't able to progress on grass blade generation

Week 4 goals:

• Proper grass blade generation
• Make sure all grass blades are handed to the compute shader so that culling can start

[moneimne]

Week 4 update:

• Grass blades are generated properly
• Blades are handed into compute shader correctly
• Learned how to use RenderDoc (it's magical)

Week 5 goals:

• Create separate graphics pipeline for grass
• Render grass without culling (tessellation included)
• Begin culling

[moneimne]

Week 5 update:

• Created separate graphics pipeline for grass
• Tessellating and rendering grass
• Significant cleanup

Week 6 plan:

• Simulate forces on grass
• Begin culling
• More cleanup for clarity

[moneimne]

Week 6 update:

• Simulating forces on grass (recovery, gravity, and wind)
• Culling grass blades (orientation, view-frustum, and distance)
• Some minimal cleanup

Week 7 plan:

• A lot of cleanup!
• More interesting wind and shading