Aether3D Game Engine

Author: Timo Wirén

Features

• Windows, macOS, iOS and Linux support.
• Vulkan, D3D12 and Metal renderers.
• Physically-based rendering.
• Particle System
• Forward+ light culling.
• Component-based game object system.
• VR support in Vulkan backend. Tested on HTC Vive.
• Sprite rendering, texture atlasing and batching.
• Bitmap and Signed Distance Field font rendering using BMFont fonts.
• Skinned animation for meshes imported from FBX.
• Variance shadow mapping.
• SSAO
• Bloom
• Audio support for .wav and .ogg.
• Hot-reloading of assets.
• Custom model format with .obj, .fbx and Blender exporter.
• Virtual file system for .pak files.
• Xbox controller support.
• Cross-Platform WYSIWYG scene editor.
• Statically linked into your application.
• Wireframe rendering mode.
• Line rendering.

Planned Features

• Tone mapping
• DoF
• Most of the features in my previous engine

Sample Code

    Window::Create( width, height, WindowCreateFlags::Fullscreen );
	
    RenderTexture cameraTex;
    cameraTex.Create2D( width, height, DataType::Float, TextureWrap::Clamp, TextureFilter::Linear, "cameraTex", false );

    GameObject camera;
    camera.AddComponent<CameraComponent>();
    camera.GetComponent<CameraComponent>()->SetClearColor( Vec3( 0, 0, 0 ) );
    camera.GetComponent<CameraComponent>()->SetProjectionType( CameraComponent::ProjectionType::Perspective );
    camera.GetComponent<CameraComponent>()->SetProjection( 45, (float)width / (float)height, 0.1f, 200 );

    Mesh sphereMesh;
    sphereMesh.Load( FileSystem::FileContents( "sphere.ae3d" ) );

    GameObject sphere;
    sphere.AddComponent< MeshRendererComponent >();
    sphere.GetComponent< MeshRendererComponent >()->SetMesh( &sphereMesh );
    sphere.AddComponent< TransformComponent >();
    sphere.GetComponent< TransformComponent >()->SetLocalPosition( { 0, 4, -80 } );

    Scene scene;
    scene.Add( &camera );
    scene.Add( &sphere );
    

API documentation

link

Build

• After building build artifacts can be found in aether3d_build next to aether3d.
• Grab the sample asset archive and extract it into aether3d_build/Samples after building.

Windows

• Open the project in Engine\VisualStudio_* in Visual Studio and build it. For MinGW you can use Engine\Makefile_Vulkan.
• Build and run Samples\01_OpenWindow. On MinGW the command is make
• Vulkan users: built-in shader sources are located in aether3d_build\Samples that comes with sample asset archive. If you modify them, you can build and deploy them by running compile_deploy_vulkan_shaders.cmd in Engine/Assets.
• FBX converter tries to find FBX SDK 2020.1.1 in its default install location (English language localization)

OpenVR

• Copy OpenVR headers into Engine\ThirdParty\headers
• Copy OpenVR DLL into aether3d_build\Samples
• Open Vulkan renderer's Visual Studio solution and select target OpenVR Release
• Build and run Samples\04_Misc3D target Release Vulkan OpenVR in Visual Studio.

macOS

• Open the project Engine/Aether3D_OSX_Metal in Xcode and build it.
• Open the project Samples/MetalSampleOSX and run it.
• FBX converter tries to find FBX SDK 2020.1.1 in its default install location.

Linux

• Install dependencies:

sudo apt install libopenal-dev libx11-xcb-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-ewmh-dev libxcb-icccm4-dev libxcb-keysyms1-dev

• Run make -f Makefile_Vulkan in Engine.

iOS

• Build Aether3D_iOS in Engine. It creates a framework.
• Copy the framework into your desktop.
• Open Samples/MetalSampleiOS and build and run it.

Tested GPUs

• AMD Radeon R9 Nano on Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 on Windows 10 and Debian 12
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750M on MacBook Pro 2013 and macOS Catalina
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 on Windows 10
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 on Windows 10
• Intel Skylake HD530 on Ubuntu 18.04

Running Tests

Visual Studio

• Unit test project can be found in Engine\Tests\UnitTests. You'll need to set it to run in x64 and copy OpenAL32.dll into the build folder.

GCC or Clang

• You can find Makefiles in Engine/Tests.

License

The engine is licensed under zlib license.

Third party library licenses are:

• stb_image.c is in public domain
• stb_vorbis.c is in public domain
• OpenAL-soft is under LGPLv2 license
• Nuklear UI is in public domain

Roadmap/internal TODO

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jKuEkIUHiFtF4Ys2-duCNKfV0SrxGgCSN_A2GhWeLDw/edit?usp=sharing