Aether Engine

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A modern rendering engine built with Rust and wgpu, designed for learning real-time graphics from Deferred PBR to ray tracing.

🌟 Features

• Modern Architecture: ECS (hecs) + RenderGraph-driven pipeline
• Cross-Platform: wgpu automatically targets Vulkan/Metal/DX12
• Deferred Shading: G-Buffer-based PBR rendering
• Extensible: Add new RenderPasses without touching existing code
• AI-Friendly: Modular design, each module fits in a single AI context window

🚀 Quick Start

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/ruochenhua/AetherEngine.git
cd AetherEngine

# Build
cargo build

# Run example (when available)
cargo run --example 01_triangle

📁 Project Structure

├── Cargo.toml
├── crates/
│   └── aether-engine/          # Main engine crate
│       └── src/
│           ├── lib.rs
│           ├── app.rs            # Application entry
│           ├── ecs/              # ECS (hecs wrapper)
│           ├── scene/            # Scene loading/serialization
│           ├── asset/            # Asset management
│           ├── renderer/         # Rendering core
│           │   ├── graph.rs      # RenderGraph
│           │   ├── context.rs    # wgpu context
│           │   └── passes/       # Render passes
│           ├── physics/          # Physics (reserved)
│           ├── math.rs
│           ├── input.rs
│           └── window.rs
├── assets/
│   ├── scenes/                   # .ron scene files
│   ├── shaders/                  # .wgsl shaders
│   ├── meshes/                   # GLTF models
│   └── textures/                 # Textures
├── examples/                     # Example programs
└── openspec/                     # OpenSpec workflow

🏗️ Architecture

ECS + RenderGraph

App (winit event loop)
  └── SystemRegistry
        ├── Update: Camera, Animation
        └── Render: RenderGraph
              ├── ShadowPass
              ├── GBufferPass
              ├── LightingPass
              ├── SkyboxPass
              ├── PostProcessPass
              └── UIPass

Key Design Decisions

Decision	Choice	Rationale
ECS Library	hecs	Minimal API, AI-friendly, no macro magic
Render API	wgpu	Single backend, auto-adapts to Vulkan/Metal/DX12
Shader Language	WGSL	Unified, no pre-compilation scripts
Scene Format	RON	Rust-native, type-safe, AI-friendly
UI	egui	Immediate mode, easy debugging panels

📅 Roadmap

Phase	Features	Status
Phase 0	Skeleton (window, triangle, egui)	🚧 In Progress
Phase 1	Deferred PBR + Shadows + IBL	🔲 Planned
Phase 2	SSR + SSAO + Post-Process	🔲 Planned
Phase 3	Terrain + Atmosphere + Water + Clouds	🔲 Planned
Phase 4	Ray Tracing (Compute + Hybrid)	🔲 Planned

🤝 Contributing

This is a personal learning project. The codebase is designed to be AI-collaboration friendly:

• Each module is self-contained (< 500 LOC)
• Clear trait interfaces (RenderPass, System, Asset)
• No complex generic constraints
• Comprehensive doc comments

📜 License

MIT OR Apache-2.0

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Aether Engine is the spiritual successor to KongEngine, rebuilt with modern architecture and Rust.