Nuo Model Viewer

This project consists of:

• A Wavefront OBJ viewer, supporting both real-time rendering and ray-tracing, which is based on Viewer Foundation, a reusable framework.
• Viewer Foundation, a reusable framework consisting of:
  • Viewer Foundation Render, which is an encapsulation to the Metal APIs, providing simplified resource and state management on top of the Metal APIs.
  • A scene-graph-like system which enables building real-time and path-tracing based renderers.

Supported GPUs

• Apple Silicon GPU is supposed to be the only GPU working on macOS in the future.
  • M1 Max (tested).

⚠️❗The whole Intel Mac product line has been terminated. AMD eGPU support is obsoleted.

• Intel HD serious GPUs are not supported. (Built-in integrated GPU in most models of Mac.)
• AMD Radeon Pro 560, and built-in descrete GPUs in almost all MacBook Pro later than 2017, are barely suppored. Their performance would be poor for the ray tracing rendering.
• For early macOS on Intel supporting eGPU, AMD Radeon RX 580 or above is recommended, in particular but not limited to:
  • AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is recommended.
  • AMD Radeon RX Vega 64, RX 5700, and so on, should be working, but untested.
  • AMD Radeon VII is highly recommended.
  • AMD Radeon Pro Vega II (Duo) (in the Mac Pro 2019). [1]
  • AMD Radeon Pro W5700. [1]

[1] Acknowledge to @ibuick for the verification.

Latest Update

• Specular lighting on a Fresnel surface.
• Multiple-importance sampling.
• Slider with adjustable scale.
• Full ray tracing.

• Hybrid rendering with ray tracing.
  • Direct lighting soft shadow.
  • Indirect lighting (ambient) with physically-based occlusion.
  • Physically based effect for the shadow overlay (blend-in with photographic scene).
  • Self-illuminating objects.
• Checkerboard background for better inspecting the result transparency.

• Inspecting intremediate textures in debug.

• Overlay indicator for selected parts.

• Transformation on the entire scene accurately around the scene's center.
• More accurate bounds calculation (improving shadow map sampling quality).
• User selection on GPU.
• Better take advantage of dedicated video memory by using private buffers. Especially important for desktop-class graphics card or external GPU).
• Background loading.
• Motion blur.
• Blending with real-scene background.

• Ambient occlusion.

• Transform of the entire scene (including the light sources).
• Better PCSS soft shadow

• Ground shadow

• Skybox.

• BRDF mode. Fix artifacts in specular lighting.
• Save to high resolution PNG (up to 3900 px).
• Rotate individual parts (mandatory for the varying-geometry wing plane model!).

• Adjustable shadowing PCF and bias to alliviate artifacts.
• Preliminary shadowing for two of the four light sources.

• Load/save scene parameters (postion, light source direction, etc.).
• Normal texture.
• Light source configuration.
• Multiple light sources.

• Adjustable lighting direction.
• Better handling to material opacity.

Screenshots on Development

TODO

• Order-independent transparency.
• Bump (displacement) texture.
• Support PBRT format.
• Normal texture.
• Direction of lgiht source.
• Intensity of light source.
• Mutilple light sources.
• Selectable list of object.
• Surface smooth.
• Shadow
  • Shadow to model
  • Shadow to ground.
  • PCSS.
    • Basic PCSS.
    • Adjustable occluder search range.
    • More adjustable bias.
  • Transparency (strength) of shadow overlay. (Achieved by ambient)
  • Linear shadow map (more plausible PCSS, VSM).
  • Adaptive shadow map resolution/region.
• Per light-source, per-surface shadow properties (bias, soft edge).
• Cull mode.
• Surrounding.
  • Cubmap skybox.
  • Water (for ship model).
• Motion blur (especially for rotating parts like rotor).
• Detailed properties panel for indiviudal model parts.
  • Smooth options (everywhere, texture discontinuiation only, etc).
  • Material opacity adjustment.
  • Material adjustment (specular, colors, etc).
  • List of board objects.
  • Self illumination.
• Ray tracing
  • Faster buffer construction.
  • Ground reflection.
  • Specular term in direct lighting shadow, and in global illumniation.
  • Light source surface sampling.
  • Shadow ray visibility.
  • Multiple importance sampling. Unified reflection model.
  • Normal map.
  • Specular map.
  • Translucent map.
• BRDF mode.
• Ambient occlusion.
• Model visualization
  • PCSS steps visualization.
  • Triangle mesh
  • Normal/tangent visualization

Early Screenshots

Screenshot of the first version (left). Add support to simple transparency (right).