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Kickstart RT Demo application using Donut

This is an example integration of the Kickstart RT SDK using the Donut framework. This app demonstrates reflection, GI, AO and ray traced shadows using Kickstart RT. As Donut and Kickstart RT support D3D11, 12 and Vulkan, this app demonstrates identical functionality using all of the APIs.
KSDemo

This repository is forked from NVIDIAGameWorks/donut and added main rendering loop with some customization on the Donut framework. On top of Donut framework, there are following submodules for this demo application.

Getting started

This application is designed to provide an example integration of the Kickstart RT SDK. By using Donut framework, it handles three different graphics APIs in the same binary on Windows. You can switch the current graphics API by simply providing an argument when executing the application.
In addition to browsing the sample code, we encourage you to check out the README.md and docs in the KickstartRT SDK repository, that includes requirement for other dependent SDKs and the GPU.

Build Steps

Kickstart_Demo is built using CMake, so the build instructions are pretty standard.

Windows build instructions
  1. Clone the repository
    git clone -–recursive https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/KickstartRT_Demo
  2. Set up the dependent libraries
    Refer KickstartRT SDK's README.md and set up prerequisites.
  3. CMake configure and generate projects.
    If you like, you can use CMake GUI to configure project files. You can set the destination folder anywhere. However, build directory just under the repository is preferred since it is already noted in .gitignore.
  4. Build & Run
    • Open the Visual Studio solution which should be generated under build directory and build KickstartRT_Demo which should be a start up project.
    • Run KickstartRT_Demo, then the app should be launched and show Sponza on the window with a debug menu. You can change the using graphics API by providing an argument -d3d12, -d3d11 or -vk.

Where is the main()?

The main part of the application is written in KickstartRT_demo\KickstartRT_Sample_Main.cpp. It is written in a verbose manner to support D3D11,12 and VK at the same time, but it is written as plainly as possible. It uses the three command lists to record rendering commands of Kickstart RT.

    nvrhi::CommandListHandle            m_CommandListKS_PreLighting;
    nvrhi::CommandListHandle            m_CommandListKS;
    nvrhi::CommandListHandle            m_CommandListKS_Post;

And, most of the interactions with the SDK are written in the following function, where it may be interesting to look into.

    void RenderRTReflections()

Debug options

Here we briefly introduce some interesting debug options.

  • The Main Features

    • Enable Reflections (Opaque)
      It enables specular reflection rendering pass by KickStart RT. With Sponza, it may be less outstanding due to its materials, but you will clearly see the difference on the emblem of the green cloth at the initial point.

    • Enable Reflections (Transparent)
      It enables specular reflection rendering pass for transparent materials. Unfortunately Sponza doesn't have transparent materials by default, so it's disabled by default. To render reflections on transparent surfaces, the app needs separate GBuffers to trace rays from the transparent surfaces.

    • Enable GI
      It enables diffuse reflection rendering pass by KickStart RT. This is the most outstanding effect in Sponza since it has a strong directional light by default and has complicated structures of geometries so we can see the indirect diffuse bounce everywhere.

    • Enable AO
      It enables ambient occlusion pass by KickStart RT. Notice that this application has two AO passes that are a conventional SSAO and a RTAO by KickStart RT. RTAO has longer AO radius and it precisely calcurate AO term on the edge of screen space, besides the SSAO picks more detailed AO with shorter AO radius.

    • RT Shadows
      It enables RT shadow passes by KickStart RT. Unfortunately, Sponza only has a simple directional light, so that it's hard to define the benefit from RT shadow, so, it's disabled by default. It can be enabled anytime and once you introduce an area light or multiple light souces, it acts better than conventional shadows maps.

    • Enable Checkerbord
      It enabled checkerboard rendering in KickStart RT render pass. This option reduces the number of rays in half to render specular, diffuse reflections and AO. You may see a big performance difference with minimal compromise on rendering qualities, especially when using a mid-range video cards.

  • Denoising Features
    You can select denoising method for each rendering pass. For more detail, it may good to refer NVIDIA Real-time Denoisers

  • Enable Debug Sub Views
    This option will show you sub-views of G-Buffer and intermediate rendering results of Kickstart RT.

  • Debug Disp

    • Direct Lighting Cache
      This option will show you the current value of direct lighting cache. It is recommended to disable denoising feature when you want to look it precisely. You may see flickering on large tiles or on the boundaries where the intensity is radically changing, which is expected because Kickstart RT doesn't manage the race condition when injecting colors (G-Buffer) into direct lighting cache in world space. With this view mode, it is also interesting to change Surfel mode and Tile unit length to see various setting for the direct lighting cache.

    • Random Tile Color
      This option will show you the direct lighting cache with randomized color to visualize its distributions.

    • MeshColor
      This option is only valid with 'Mesh color' surfel mode. The RGB color visualizes the classification of direct lighting cache of mesh color. Red means the cache for the interior of a triangle. Green means the cache for the edge of a primitive and shared with other primitives that share the edge. Blue means the cache for a vertex of a triangle, shared with other primitives that share the vertex.

  • Enable Global Roughness
    This option will override all roughness value with the specified value. It's good to see how specular reflection works regardless of the material in the scene.

  • Enable Global Metalness
    This option will override all metalness value with the specified value. It's good to see how specular reflection works regardless of the material in the scene.

  • Surfel Mode

    • WarpedBarycentricStorage
      With this mode, direct lighting cache is allocated along the edge lengths of a primitive and Tile Unit Length, and assigned an allocated (logically) quad-shape buffer to a triangle primitive with simple warping math. In this mode, cache allocation and evaluation are relatively simple when comparing to Mesh Color mode. But it is unable to interpolate direct lighting cache values over surfaces.

    • MeshColor
      With this mode, direct lighting cache is allocated based on an idea of Mesh Colors and Tile Unit Length. In this mode, cache allocation and evaluation are little complicated against the mode above, but the cache value can be interpolated over the surface since it manages caches on vertices and edges separately from the interior of a primitive.

  • Tile Unit Length
    This value is used to determine the direct lighting cache resolutions. It is decided based on the edge length (in WarpedBaryCentryStorage mode) or surface area(in MeshColor mode) with this value.

  • Tile resolution limit
    This value defines the upper limit of the cache resolutions. Some scenes have pretty huge primitives and they will result in a huge buffer allocation in the SDK. This value is to avoid a sudden huge buffer allocation by such primitives.

The following sections are the original README contents from Donut framework.

Donut

Donut is a real-time rendering framework built by NVIDIA DevTech for use in various prototype renderers and code samples. It provides a collection of reusable and somewhat extensible rendering passes that can be put together in an application, and a system for loading a scene and maintaining its component graph.

Donut is not a game engine. It does not provide any means for creating interactive experiences, such as actors or navigation.

Donut has originated from the VRWorks Multi-Projection SDK and has been improved and evolved since. Different versions of Donut have been used to build the Asteroids demo, the DLSS SDK, and the RTXDI SDK.

Requirements

  • Windows or Linux (x64 or ARM64)
  • CMake 3.10
  • A C++ 17 compiler (Visual Studio 2019, GCC 8 or Clang 6)
  • A shader compiler (FXC for DX11, DXC for DX12, DXC-SPIR-V for Vulkan - the newer the better)

Dependencies

Required (all included as git submodules):

  • cgltf to load glTF scenes
  • JsonCpp to read and write JSON scene and configuration files
  • stb to read and write textures and other images

Optional (also included as git submodules but can be disabled through CMake variables):

  • NVRHI, ImGUI, and glfw for rendering (DONUT_WITH_NVRHI)
  • TaskFlow for multi-threading (DONUT_WITH_TASKFLOW)
  • tinyexr to read EXR images (DONUT_WITH_TINYEXR)
  • LZ4 to extract packaged media (DONUT_WITH_LZ4)
  • miniz to mount zip archives (DONUT_WITH_MINIZ)

Examples

Example projects that use Donut can be found in a separate repository: donut_examples.

Build

Donut is not set up to be built as a separate project. It should always be included as a submodule into a larger CMake-based project. Follow the instructions for each project to get it built.

Structure

Donut consists of 4 major subsystems, represented as separate static libraries:

  • donut_core provides the basic functionality, including math, virtual file system (VFS), logging, JSON and other utilities. The core module does not include any graphics functions.
  • donut_engine implements scene import and maintenance, animations, materials, texture cache, descriptor table management, console variables, and basic audio. Depends on donut_core.
  • donut_render provides a collection of rendering passes, such as forward and deferred shading, temporal AA, SSAO, shadow maps, procedural sky, tone mapping, and bloom. Depends on donut_core and donut_engine.
  • donut_app is a framework for creating interactive applications and it includes the graphics device managers, UI bindings and utilities, camera, and media file systems. Depends on donut_core and donut_engine.

The engine and render modules require some shaders, which can be found in the shaders folder and built with the donut_shaders target.

Features

Graphics API support

Most interaction with graphics APIs is done through the NVRHI abstraction layer. Donut and NVRHI support the following GAPIs:

  • Vulkan 1.2, requires Vulkan headers version 1.2.162 or later; included as a submodule of NVRHI (DONUT_WITH_VULKAN)
  • Direct3D 12, requires Windows SDK version 19041 or later (DONUT_WITH_DX12)
  • Direct3D 11, requires some compatible version of Windows SDK (DONUT_WITH_DX11)

Note that NVRHI does not provide any means to create the GAPI devices or windows, that functionality is handled by the DeviceManager class and its descendants in donut_app.

Scene formats

In this version, Donut can only import glTF 2.0 models with some limitations:

  • No morph targets
  • No KTX2 textures (but DDS textures are supported)

Supported glTF extensions:

  • KHR_materials_pbrSpecularGlossiness
  • KHR_materials_transmission
  • KHR_lights_punctual
  • MSFT_texture_dds.

In addition to glTF, Donut supports its own JSON-based scene layout files. Those files can load multiple glTF models and combine them into a larger scene graph, also add lights, cameras, animations, and apply animations to scene nodes imported from the models using their paths.

Render passes

For a full list of render passes, refer to the headers in the include/donut/render folder.

The most useful passes are:

  • Forward shading
  • G-buffer fill
  • Deferred shading
  • Temporal anti-aliasing
  • Adaptive tone mapping
  • SSAO
  • Procedural sky

Ray tracing

Donut does not provide any ray tracing passes or even maintain acceleration structures (AS'es). That is mostly because the requirements for ray tracing AS'es are different in each application, and those affect the passes that use the AS'es. But it does provide a generic bindless resource table that is populated with textures and geometry data buffers when the scene is loaded. Building acceleration structures for a scene can be easily handled on the application side using the data structures provided by Donut's scene representation and the NVRHI abstractions.

License

Donut is licensed under the MIT License.