Renderer in Rust

After writing an OpenGL renderer in C++ to learn about graphics rendering and extend my knowledge of C++, I got interested in the Rust programming language and lower level graphics APIs.

As part of my master's thesis, where I took a look into the ecosystem of Rust related to game development as a whole, I specialised in implementing a basic renderer as a practical exercise.

• Low level graphics library (gfx-rs) and a later partial rewrite directly using Vulkan 1.1 (with Validation Layers, Swapchains and Imageless Framebuffers)

  • Command Pools / Command Buffers

  • Render Passes and sub-pass dependencies

  • Graphics Pipelines

  • Semaphores and Fences

  • Preparing multiple frames in flight

• Advanced techniques in Rust

  • Careful usage of unsafe keyword for low level interactions that require it

  • Controlling lifetimes with careful handling of ownership, Drop traits and ManuallyDrop to ensure the Vulkan instance is deinitialised according to spec

  • Cross-compilation between Windows and Linux

The source code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/saschabrunner/Rust-Game-Engine

The initial version used gfx-rs, a low-level rendering library in Rust which heavily oriented itself on Vulkan. To bridge the gaps, I heavily cross-referenced the library's documentation and samples with Vulkan resources from Khronos, Nvidia and GPUOpen (AMD).

For the rewrite in Vulkan I used the ash library which provides language bindings to the Vulkan API in Rust. I cross-referenced my implementation with the guide on vulkan-tutorial.com. This guide was a great resource for me to understand all the low-level concepts required to set up a renderer with Vulkan and I mapped all the concepts demonstrated in that guide from C++ to Rust myself.