Crate vulkano

source ·
Expand description

Safe and rich Rust wrapper around the Vulkan API.

Brief summary of Vulkan

  • The Instance object is the API entry point. It is the first object you must create before starting to use Vulkan.

  • The PhysicalDevice object represents an implementation of Vulkan available on the system (eg. a graphics card, a software implementation, etc.). Physical devices can be enumerated from an instance with PhysicalDevice::enumerate().

  • Once you have chosen a physical device to use, you can create a Device object from it. The Device is the most important object of Vulkan, as it represents an open channel of communication with a physical device. You always need to have one before you can do interesting things with Vulkan.

  • Buffers and images can be used to store data on memory accessible by the GPU (or more generally by the Vulkan implementation). Buffers are usually used to store information about vertices, lights, etc. or arbitrary data, while images are used to store textures or multi-dimensional data.

  • In order to show something on the screen, you need a Swapchain. A Swapchain contains special Images that correspond to the content of the window or the monitor. When you present a swapchain, the content of one of these special images is shown on the screen.

  • In order to ask the GPU to do something, you must create a command buffer. A command buffer contains a list of commands that the GPU must perform. This can include copies between buffers and images, compute operations, or graphics operations. For the work to start, the command buffer must then be submitted to a Queue, which is obtained when you create the Device.

  • In order to be able to add a compute operation or a graphics operation to a command buffer, you need to have created a ComputePipeline or a GraphicsPipeline object that describes the operation you want. These objects are usually created during your program’s initialization. Shaders are programs that the GPU will execute as part of a pipeline. Descriptors can be used to access the content of buffers or images from within shaders.

  • For graphical operations, RenderPasses and Framebuffers describe on which images the implementation must draw upon.

  • Once you have built a command buffer that contains a list of commands, submitting it to the GPU will return an object that implements the GpuFuture trait. GpuFutures allow you to chain multiple submissions together and are essential to performing multiple operations on multiple different GPU queues.

Re-exports

pub extern crate half;

Modules

Location in memory that contains data.
Commands that the GPU will execute (includes draw commands).
Provides a way for shaders to access the content of buffers and images, or read arbitrary data.
Communication channel with a physical device.
Declares all the formats of data and images supported by Vulkan.
Targets on which your draw commands are executed.
Image storage (1D, 2D, 3D, arrays, etc.).
API entry point.
Device memory allocation and memory pools.
Describes a graphical or compute operation.
This module provides support for query pools.
How to retrieve data from an image within a shader.
Link between Vulkan and a window and/or the screen.
Synchronization on the GPU.

Macros

Builds an ApplicationInfo from the information gathered by Cargo.
Takes a BufferSlice that points to a struct, and returns a BufferSlice that points to a specific field of that struct.
Implements the Vertex trait on a struct.
Builds a RenderPass object whose template parameter is of indeterminate type.
Builds a RenderPass object whose template parameter is of indeterminate type.
Expression that returns a loader that assumes that Vulkan is linked to the executable you’re compiling.

Enums

Error type returned by most Vulkan functions.

Traits

Alternative to the Deref trait. Contrary to Deref, must always return the same object.
Gives access to the internal identifier of an object.
Gives access to the internal identifier of an object.