Status report: Demo, physically based rendering, cluster based deferred shading, preparing for Vulkan

It’s been a while. AnKi’s development is continuing with some slowdown (I am a dad now). Some of the new features that landed in the codebase since the last update:

  • Physical based rendering. Seems everyone is using it and now I can understand why.
  • Cluster based deferred shading. Changed the (CPU hybrid) tile based with a brand new one that divides the space into clusters. It’s CPU hybrid once again. Avalance is (was) using something similar.
  • Added tone mapping with eye adaptation.
  • The lighting is fully HDR now.
  • Added support for particles that react to lights. The new cluster based renderer allows me to do that which is pretty cool.
  • Reworked the graphics backend to make it Vulkan friendly. I’ll start with the Vulkan backend when the drivers become a bit more stable (now they are in early beta state).
  • Finally I worked with an artist for a few months to produce a game level. This level is helping me optimize the engine for real life scenarios. Ultimately I’ll produce a tech demo with it.

For the future:

  • Continue creating a UI library (boring).
  • Expand on a new idea for reflections.
  • Expand on a new idea for global illumination
  • Integrate Newton Game Dynamics even further (create joints and other stuff).
  • Start on the Vulkan backend.

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