A template for cross-platform Auto-Vk-Toolkit projects using CMake as build system.
Auto-Vk-Toolkit is a rendering framework for the Vulkan 1.2 API, implemented in modern C++, using C++17 and C++20 features.
It aims to hit the sweet spot between programmer-convenience and efficiency while still supporting full Vulkan functionality.
Click on the Button near the top of the page to generate your own project using this template. Then simply clone your newly created project.
- A Vulkan 1.1 SDK or newer
- A C++20 compiler (GCC, Clang and MSVC are currently supported)
- CMake 3.13 or newer
Within the directory to which you cloned your project and run the following commands:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. && make
./Auto-Vk-Toolkit-Starter
Make sure you have installed CMake tools for Visual Studio.
Open the directory which contains your project with Visual Studio, wait for Visual Studio to run the CMake configuration and then select Gears_Vk_Starter.exe/<Your Project Name>.exe as Startup Item and run it by pressing the "play" button.
Auto-Vk-Toolkit-Starter projects are not configured to use the Post Build Helper, but use CMake to do the same things.
There are two special directories in this project for which special actions are configured for the executable: <project root>/shaders and <project root>/assets
In your source code you can treat them as if these directories were in the same location as your executable.
Even more so: you can treat all GLSL shaders as if they were already compiled to SPIR-V binaries.
All GLSL shader files in the <project root>/shaders directory are compiled to SPIR-V and written to <dir containing executable>/shaders.
Shaders are added to a custom target which is added as a dependency of the executable. Changes to shader files will be recognised by CMake and will trigger a recompilation.
However, new shaders are only added to this custom target at CMake configure time. So when you're using an IDE like CLion or Visual Studio, you'll have to trigger a reconfiguration of CMake files.
E.g. by reloading the CMake project or by temporarily adding a message() call to CMakeLists.txt.
For all files and directories in the <project root>/assets symbolic links will be created in <dir containing executable>/assets.
Assets are copied as a post build actions. Like with the shaders you'll need to trigger a CMake reconfiguration to make it recognize and configure post build actions for new assets.
On Windows, symbolic links are also created for all DLLs required by Auto-Vk-Toolkit in the same manner.
Use the CMake option gvk_ReleaseDLLsOnly to enforce the use of release DLLs even in debug builds.
If you want to project, you can configure the post build actions to copy dependencies, i.e. DLLs (Windows only) & assets, instead of creating symbolic links, by turning off the CMake option gvkStarter_CreateDependencySymlinks.
If you found a bug in the template (i.e. in the provided src/main.cpp, the CMake or GitHub workflow files) please open an issue directly in the template project.
However, if the bug you found is in Auto-Vk-Toolkit, please create the issue directly over there.
- Auto-Vk: A low-level convenience and productivity layer atop Vulkan-Hpp.
- Auto-Vk-Toolkit: A larger real-time rendering framework built on top of Auto-Vk.