Rendering Engine supports two application development workflows and a separate runtime environment.

Dev Mode

Dev Mode uses the Rendering Engine source tree directly. It is intended for both engine development and application development when full access to the engine source code is useful.

In this mode, developers can:

modify and rebuild the Rendering Engine;
build TestApplications and ContentExamples from the same source tree;
create applications that evolve together with engine features;
debug through both application and engine code.

Dev Mode requires the complete Rendering Engine build environment, including the engine's third-party implementation dependencies.

SDK User Mode

SDK User Mode uses the precompiled Rendering Engine SDK.

It is intended for applications that consume the engine as a binary dependency and do not need to modify or debug the engine implementation.

SDK users require a C++ toolchain, CMake, Python, the Vulkan SDK, and the precompiled Rendering Engine SDK. The engine's implementation dependencies are already included in the precompiled Rendering Engine library.

Windows

Dev Mode

Requirements Visual Studio, CMake, Python

Install vcpkg:
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git

cd vcpkg

.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

.\vcpkg.exe integrate install
Set the VCPKG_ROOT environment variable to the folder where you cloned vcpkg:

Variable name: VCPKG_ROOT
Variable value: Path\To\vcpkg

Install required libraries:

.\vcpkg install glm nlohmann-json gtest

Download and install the Vulkan SDK
Set the glslc environment variable to point to the glslc.exe binary included in the SDK: Variable name: glslc Variable value: Path\To\glslc.exe
Download the source code:

git clone git@github.com:alexanderobzherin/RenderingEngine.git

cd RenderingEngine

Prepare static dependencies

.\vcpkg install --triplet x64-windows-static-md glfw3 libpng libjpeg-turbo freetype harfbuzz assimp

Build engine

Run

.\build_engine.bat

SDK User Mode

Requirements Visual Studio, CMake, Python

Download latest release from

Rendering Engine SDK Releases

Here you can build content examples such as
ContentExamples\MultilingualTextDemo\build_project.bat

and/or create new projects. See: Project Creation Guide

Ubuntu

Dev Mode

Install build tools and libraries:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install git cmake build-essential nasm pkg-config libglm-dev libgtest-dev nlohmann-json3-dev chrpath

Install the Vulkan SDK Note: As of May 2025, LunarG has discontinued updating Vulkan SDK packages in the official Ubuntu repositories. The following approaches are now officially recommended:

Option 1: Install from tarball (universal, for any Linux/Unix-like system) See instructions here: https://vulkan.lunarg.com/doc/sdk/1.4.313.0/linux/getting_started.html

Option 2: Install via LunarG APT repository (recommended for Ubuntu)

wget -qO- https://packages.lunarg.com/lunarg-signing-key-pub.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/lunarg.asc
sudo wget -qO /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lunarg-vulkan-noble.list http://packages.lunarg.com/vulkan/lunarg-vulkan-noble.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vulkan-sdk

Download the source code:

git clone git@github.com:alexanderobzherin/RenderingEngine.git

cd RenderingEngine

Prepare static dependencies

The Rendering Engine provides a helper script that downloads, builds and installs all required implementation libraries automatically.

Run

./RenderingEngine/Scripts/build_static_dependencies_unix.sh

Build engine

Run

./build_engine.sh --engine-only

SDK User Mode

Install build tools and libraries:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install git cmake build-essential nasm pkg-config chrpath

Install the Vulkan SDK Note: As of May 2025, LunarG has discontinued updating Vulkan SDK packages in the official Ubuntu repositories. The following approaches are now officially recommended:

Option 1: Install from tarball (universal, for any Linux/Unix-like system) See instructions here: https://vulkan.lunarg.com/doc/sdk/1.4.313.0/linux/getting_started.html

Option 2: Install via LunarG APT repository (recommended for Ubuntu)

wget -qO- https://packages.lunarg.com/lunarg-signing-key-pub.asc | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/lunarg.asc
sudo wget -qO /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lunarg-vulkan-noble.list http://packages.lunarg.com/vulkan/lunarg-vulkan-noble.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vulkan-sdk

Download latest release from

Rendering Engine SDK Releases

Here you can build content examples such as

ContentExamples/MultilingualTextDemo/build_project.sh

and/or create new projects. See: Project Creation Guide

FreeBSD

Dev Mode

Install build tools and libraries:

sudo pkg install pkgconf glm googletest vulkan-loader vulkan-headers shaderc nlohmann-json chrpath

Download the source code:

git clone git@github.com:alexanderobzherin/RenderingEngine.git

cd RenderingEngine

Prepare static dependencies

The Rendering Engine provides a helper script that downloads, builds and installs all required implementation libraries automatically.

Run

./RenderingEngine/Scripts/build_static_dependencies_unix.sh

Build engine

Run

./build_engine.sh --engine-only

SDK User Mode

Install build tools and libraries:

sudo pkg install pkgconf glm vulkan-loader shaderc chrpath

Download latest release from

Rendering Engine SDK Releases

Here you can build content examples such as

ContentExamples/MultilingualTextDemo/build_project.sh

and/or create new projects. See: Project Creation Guide

Application Deployment

Applications built with the Rendering Engine are intended to have a minimal runtime footprint.

By default, user applications link dynamically against the Rendering Engine shared library.

Typical runtime requirements are:

RenderingEngine.dll / libRenderingEngine.so
Vulkan loader and compatible graphics driver
zlib (Linux and FreeBSD)
Standard operating-system runtime libraries

For more details see: