The NVIDIA MDL SDK enables the easy integration of MDL support into rendering and material editing applications. The SDK contains components for loading, inspecting, and editing of material definitions as well as compiling MDL materials and functions to HLSL, GLSL, PTX, LLVM-IR, and native code for x86 and arm CPUs.
The NVIDIA Material Definition Language (MDL) is a domain-specific programming language for defining physically-based materials for rendering. It allows you to define materials and functions, which you can organize in modules and packages to create flexible, custom-built material catalogs.
Material definitions are written in a declarative style; they define what to compute -- not how to compute it. This is the central premise in MDL where one material definition delivers the same appearance in many rendering algorithms. Following is a simple example of a diffuse material in MDL:
material diffuse ( color diffuse_color = color(0.7))
= material(
surface: material_surface (
scattering: df::diffuse_reflection_bsdf (
tint: diffuse_color
)
)
);
The function definitions in MDL are written in a procedural programming style. Their use is limited to computing material parameters in a side-effect-free manner.
The clear separation of material definitions from function definitions and their respective constraints makes possible the optimization of rendering algorithms independently of the material definition.
NVIDIA offers a binary release of the MDL SDK, see https://developer.nvidia.com/mdl-sdk. The binary release is different in some functionality as documented in the Change Log.
The INSTALL.md file has the detailed instructions on how to build and install the SDK.
The NVIDIA MDL SDK repository consists of the following directories and files:
include/ - C++ API header files
examples/ - example programs and MDL files
src/ - source code for the SDK libraries
doc/ - API documentation, MDL specification,
core_definitions.mdl and base.mdl documentation
cmake/ - support files for the CMAKE build system
INSTALL.md - how to build and install the SDK
README.md - this file: introduction and build instructions
CHANGELOG.md - change log and difference to the binary MDL SDK release
LICENSE.md - license for the MDL SDK and references to
third-party licenses
CMakeLists.txt - top level CMAKE file