Untitled

🚧 This is a learning-focused renderer under construction — built with love and low-level code.

Yet another renderer engine without title. This built from the ground up using DirectX 11 and JAI — focused on lighting, performance, and GPU-driven workflows. This project serves as a personal exploration of engine architecture, graphics programming, and system-level design without relying on third-party game engines.

✨ Features

• 🧵 glTF Model Viewer
  • Loads static glTF/glb files (geometry data)
  • Custom vertex layout and GPU upload pipeline
• 💡 Forward Lighting Pass
  • Directional light with Blinn-Phong highlights
  • Hemispheric ambient light (simple ambient approximation)
  • Per-material lighting logic in HLSL
• 🧰 2D Sprite Batching
  • Dynamic batching system using indexed quads
  • Ideal for UI overlays or debug rendering
• 🎨 Material System
  • GPU-side StructuredBuffer<Material> with ID-based lookup
  • Per-object constant buffer contains material index and transform
• ⚙️ DirectX 11 Backend
  • Manually managed device, states, buffers, and draw calls
  • Shader-driven rendering with clean buffer separation

🚧 Work in Progress

This project is not yet real-time or optimized. It's a renderer under active development, intended to test core features and rendering workflows.

Current focus areas:

• Building a simple scene/instance system
• Improving GPU material lookup and buffer management
• Adding debug overlays and shader hot-reloading (planned)

💼 About the Developer

I'm an aspiring graphics programmer focused on understanding the low-level foundations of rendering engines. This project reflects my hands-on approach to learning modern GPU pipelines, lighting models, and rendering techniques from scratch.

🔧 Tech Stack

• Language: Jai
• Graphics API: DirectX 11
• Shader Language: HLSL
• Rendering: Forward pass with lighting
• Model Format: glTF 2.0 (geometry/material only)

📌 Goals

• Build a functional forward rendering/ deferred rendering pipeline
• Showcase lighting and structured GPU material design
• Prepare a foundation for real-time rendering in the future

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🛠️ How to Build

✅ Requirements

• Jai compiler (private beta)
• Windows OS with DirectX 11.1
• GPU supporting Direct3D Feature Level 11_0 or higher
• Terminal or shell that supports running jai commands

🧱 Build Instructions

1. Install the Jai compiler

   • This project requires the Jai language compiler, which is currently in closed early access.

2. Open a terminal in the project directory

3. Generate Bindings for ImGui

   • This project uses Dear ImGui as the UI layer. You'll need to generate static bindings before building the engine.
   • Navigate to the ImGui vendor folder:

     cd vendor/imgui

   • Run the following Jai commands:

     jai generate.jai -- -compile
     jai generate.jai -- -backend_d3d11

   • This will generate the necessary static library and backend-specific bindings for DirectX 11.

4. Compile the project

   jai first.jai