demofoxAug 23, 2024
OK here is my big announcement. For the past couple years I've been working on a rapid prototyping and development platform for real time rendering.
TL;DR - use nodes in a node graph to string together compute shaders, ray gen shaders, draw calls, etc. View it in a viewer that supports hot reloading. When you are done, generate code that would pass a code review. (Currently only DX12 code gen is public. More coming in future!)
https://github.com/electronicarts/gigi
GitHub - electronicarts/gigi: A framework for rapid prototyping and development of real-time rendering techniques.

A framework for rapid prototyping and development of real-time rendering techniques. - electronicarts/gigi

GitHub
Show threadJérémie St-Amand
@demofox congrats, this is awesome! The codegen part in particular will be so, so helpful when experimenting and teaching!
Aug 24, 2024 at 4:39amWeb
Show threadoparisyAug 24, 2024
@jesta88 @demofox Do you plan to ship this with projects demonstrating typical rendering techniques and shaders? Or to have an associated repo gathering such examples? That would be an awesome learning resource.
Show threaddemofoxAug 24, 2024
@oparisy @jesta88 some techniques but all that would be a lot of work. Hopefully other people will start making things like that and sharing them.
It would be great if we could have tutorials like the old days again (E.g. nehe) not having to spend a month getting to the first triangle!
Show threadoparisyAug 24, 2024
@demofox @jesta88 sure, I was thinking along the line of a collaborative effort. "Prepare the repo and they will come" (hopefully)
Show threadoparisyAug 24, 2024
@jesta88 @demofox is there a stable serialized form for the graph that could be used as input to code generators to other engines and platforms? Also, is this bare metal (DirectX, Vulcan level effects), or can it be used to write shaders integrable into engines (pending the availability of the generators described above)?
Show threaddemofoxAug 24, 2024
@oparisy @jesta88 there isn't a serialized output of the flattened graph, that'd be a good idea, I'll add that to the todos.
DX12 is the only public code generator at the moment but internally we have UE5 and frostbite code generators too that support ~90% of the features.
Webgpu is also something we'd like to get done. Being able to share a URL to arbitrary render techniques would be really nice.