Module ray_tracing

Ray tracing pipeline functionality for GPU-accelerated ray tracing.

Overview

Ray tracing pipelines enable high-performance ray tracing by defining a set of shader stages that handle ray generation, intersection testing, and shading calculations. The pipeline consists of different shader stages organized into shader groups.

Shader types

Ray generation shader

• Entry point for ray tracing.
• Generates and traces primary rays.
• Controls the overall ray tracing process.

Intersection shaders

• Built-in triangle intersection handles standard triangle geometry intersection.
• Custom intersection implements custom geometry intersection testing.

Hit shaders

• Closest hit executes when a ray finds its closest intersection.
• Any hit is an optional shader that runs on every potential intersection.

Miss shader

• Executes when a ray doesn’t intersect any geometry.
• Typically handles environment mapping or background colors.

Callable shader

• Utility shader that can be called from other shader stages.
• Enables code reuse across different shader stages.

Pipeline organization

Shaders are organized into groups:

• General groups contain ray generation, miss, or callable shaders.
• Triangle hit groups contain closest-hit and optional any-hit shaders.
• Procedural hit groups contain intersection, closest-hit, and optional any-hit shaders.

The ray tracing pipeline uses a Shader Binding Table (SBT) to organize and access these shader groups during execution.

Structs

RayTracingPipeline

Defines how the implementation should perform ray tracing operations.

RayTracingPipelineCreateInfo

Parameters to create a new RayTracingPipeline.

ShaderBindingTable

An object that holds the shader binding table buffer and its addresses.

ShaderBindingTableAddresses

An object that holds the strided addresses of the shader groups in a shader binding table.

ShaderGroupHandlesData

Holds the data returned by RayTracingPipeline::group_handles.

Enums

RayTracingShaderGroupCreateInfo

Enum representing different types of Ray Tracing Shader Groups.