Falcor 8.0

8.0

Overview

• Added base classes to Scene and LightCollection
• Fixes and additions to differentiable path tracer.
• Switched to new Slang version with API changes.
• Support for Scenes larger than 4GB.

Dependencies

• Update slang to version 2024.1.34
  • Use new slang API for disabling compiler warnings.
  • Disable slang reinterpret size mismatch warning to reduce diagnostic noise.

Python

• Add UI interface functions to Testbed.
• Moved the per-frame python callback that allows modifying Scene to Mogwai.
• Add python interface to Device to query available adapters.
• Add error check if no GPU is found.
• Added a convenience camera dump output formatted so it can be directly pasted into .pyscene.

Importers

• Added a scene importer for Mitsuba 3 XML scene files (based on what @skallweit had a few years ago).
  • The importer supports a subset of the Mitsuba scene descriptions (see README.md).
• Improvements to make discovery of USD material shaders more robust.
• Add usdz to list of supported file types.

Passes

• Refactored the return value of InternalPathTracer's traceRay calls.
• Added a new "overlayUI" feature to Mogwai which allows users to draw simple primitives over the final rendered image. This is very helpful for debugging and visualizing aspects of various experiments.
• SceneDebugger can now visualize content of VBuffer, rather than always tracing its primary rays.
• Enable the pixel debugger for per pixel debug printing in the SceneDebugger pass.
• Add support for visualizing BSDFProperties in SceneDebugger.

Differentiable path tracer

• Fix the condition for computeEmissive.
• Fix a division-by-zero issue (which causes NaNs during bwd_diff) by checking bsdfSample.pdf > 0.
• Change shape optimization examples with max_bounces=2.
• Extend SceneGradients to allow more gradient types: MeshPosition, MeshNormal, and MeshTangent.
• Add custom derivative functions in DiffSceneIO.slang to backprop gradients of mesh vertices.
• Add an inverse rendering example that optimizes the translation and the rotation angle of the bunny.
• Add an inverse rendering example that morphs a sphere to a bunny.

Scene

• Scene now has a base class IScene to allow alternative Scene implementations.
  • Switched RTXDI to use IScene
  • Switched ScreenSpaceReSTIR to use IScene
  • Switched GridVolumeSampler to use IScene
• LightCollection now has a base class ILightCollection so different alternative implementations are easier to intergrate.
  • EmissiveLightSamplers now operate on ILightCollection instead of on Scene.
• Changed the setRaytracingShaderData to bindShaderDataForRaytracing to have singature that's more aligned with bindShaderData
  • Removed several unnecessary bindShaderData calls (followed by bindShaderDataForRaytracing that already binds those).
  • Removed several unnecessary bindShaderDataForRaytracing calls (followed by IScene::raytrace that already binds those).
• Renamed getActiveLights to getActiveAnalyticLights to make it clear which lights are these (in line with useAnalyticLights)
• Removed the getActiveLightCount and getActiveLight as they are not necessary.
• Refactored VertexData to a separate file, to not require importing all SceneTypes when using it.
• Refactored MaterialInstanceHints into its own file, so they can be used in interface without pulling full MaterialInstance in. (Breaks cyclic dependencies down the line)
• Added unpackHitInfo method on Scene so it is easier to specialize when needed.
• Scene's HitData now returns PackedHitInfo via a pack() call, putting it in line with other structs returning their packed form via a pack() call. The fact that HitData already contains PackedHitInfo and no work is done should be an implementation detail, not reflected in the method name.
• Added default argument values to SceneRayQuery calls.
• Added UpdateFlagsCallback to Scene, that allows having callback called when SceneUpdateFlags are changed, so the update flags are accumulated in the listener rather than Scene. To avoid missing updates when the flags are not acted on right away.
• Added SplitBuffer type, that handles buffers larger than 4GB, for up to 4 billion items.
  • Top bits of an index are used to select a GPU buffer.
• Vertex data is no longer uploaded inside AnimationController, but along with Index data it is uploaded when copied into Scene.
• Changed splitMeshGroupMidpointMeshes behavior in the case where one side of the split ended up empty. This can happen when long skinny triangles make the bbox very imbalanced with respect to the actual triangle centroids. Previously, we would just give up on splitting the group, ending with possible very large groups. New approach just sorts the meshes by their centroids on the axis that was deemed to be the best split axis, and splits the group in half.

Error Handling

• Add checks in parameter block init for invalid use of arrays of textures on vulkan (which previous failed silenetly)
  • Note: Checked perf in profiler - effect is negligible compared to cost of the rest of the function
• Turned warning on 4GB buffers into an exception, as it actually affects the renderer's results.
• Add unit test for nested arrays of textures.
• Add unit tests for Slang generics in interfaces.
• Add unit tests for floating-point atomics.

General

• Structured buffers are now created without a UAV counter by default.
• Buffer views are now based on byte ranges, not element ranges.
• Buffer::getSRV() and Buffer::getUAV() now take a byte range instead of element range.
• Allow USD variant set selection to be overridden through attributes.
• Moved LightProfile handling to MaterialSystem as it is more (emissive) Material than Scene related.
• Update the VNDF sampling function to use the latest spherical cap sampling technique (HPG 2023 paper)
  • "Sampling Visible GGX Normals with Spherical Caps" by Dupuy and Benyoub [2023]. See https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/sampling-visible-ggx-normals.html
• Make available all imported asset paths and associated material dictionaries
• Add support for shared resources (CUDA) on Vulkan/Linux.
• Added support for 16b images.
  • Dropped code that would mistakenly interpret 16b images as Float16.
  • Added a flag for saving EXRs in half floats.
  • If the input texture is 16b EXR, we automatically set the Bitmap::ImportFlags::ConvertToFloat16 to conserve GPU memory.
  • Add Bitmap::ImportFlags to specify import options, and pass import flags through texture loading functions.
  • Add flag for converting HDR images to 16-bit format upon texture load.
• Remove unused lod parameter to prepareShadingData().
• Add tracking of texture ownership in TextureManager.
  • Free textures no longer in use when removing materials.
• Add interface for querying memory usage on Scene and some utility classes.
• Add TextureManager::getUdimIDs() helper to get list of UDIM IDs for a texture handle.
• Remove Buffer::MapType enum.
• Change the script name to run_material_optimization.py for consistency.
• Added LOD parameter to environment map sampler function.

Bug fixes

• Fixes a discrepancy between Python and C++ default values when creating grids.
• Fixed a possible bug where, if the Assimp importer skipped a mesh, the meshMap would get out of sync with the meshes in the actual aiScene.
• Fixed bug when LightCollection was rebuilt in Scene (on EmissiveMaterialsChanged). LightBVHSampler and EmissionPowerSampler were still operating on the old LightCollection object, which was no longer the same object held by Scene.
• Fix issue with loading filtered attributes from json
• MaterialSystem now re-evaluates the Metadata after calling update(), to make sure it reports enough texture slots. Can be removed pending fix to unbounded buffers.
• Fix PBRT coated and dielectric materials bug.
• Bitmap::getSize() is now 64b to avoid crashes on 16k textures.
• BakedTexture calculates sizes in size_t to match the Bitmap::getSize()
• Fix issue with refinement of left-handed subdivs.
• Fix 2D multi-sampled texture resolving.

Refactored Attributes and Settings to be more streamlined for the actual usage.

• Added AttributeFilters, to allow attaching attributes to shapes based on the name regex lookup. The new syntax for a filter is:
  • { "name": "name of the filter", "regex": "shape_name_to_apply_to.*", "attributes": {"attr":"ibutes","applied":"to","all":"matching","names":1}}
  • The name and regex are optional. If regex is not specified, the attributes are applied to all shapes (equal to regex .* )
  • If neither name nor regex are required, the attributes can be unnested like so: {"attr":"ibutes","applied":"to","all":"matching","names":1}
  • This supercedes the previous attribute.filter syntax for assigning attributes to all shapes with matching names or all shapes with not matching names.
  • To attach an attribute to all shapes not matching a name, first create a filter that applies the attribute to all shapes, and then create an attribute that applies the attribute with null value to the shapes that are not supposed to have it. This unsets the attribute for the given shapes.
  • All filters are applied in the order in which they were added, and it is possible to add an array of filters at once.
• Refactored the Settings class to be streamlined with the new AttributeFilters pattern.
• Refactored Options handling to match the Attribute handling (except there is no regex )
• The lookup can now only be done by fully qualified name, e.g. usdImporter:dropPrim

7.0

Overview

This release of Falcor provides the following significant improvements and new features:

• Falcor as a Python extension, allowing Falcor to be used directly from Python.
• CUDA interop, including sharing buffers and synchronization between Falcor and CUDA.
• PyTorch interop, allowing Falcor to be used for implementing PyTorch functions.
• Differentiable Slang and various examples including a BSDF optimizer and a differentiable path tracer.
• Support for Shader Execution Reordering (SER) in the path tracer.

Dependencies

• Update slang to version 2023.3.20.
• Update nvapi to version R535.
• Update DLSS to version 3.5.

Build System

• Enable more MSVC warnings.
• Add FALCOR_ENABLE_ASSERTS CMake option.
• Remove FALCOR_REPORT_EXCEPTION_AS_ERROR CMake option.

Assets

• Fix media files to use relative paths.
• Move volume test scenes to media package.
• Move grey_and_white_room scene to falcor_media.
• Replace Cerberus with CesiumMan.

Examples

• Add a simple example showing interop between Falcor and pytroch, learning to represent an image from a set of gaussians.
• Add Slang based BC7 compressor.

DiffSlang

• Add a BSDFOptimizer that can run simple inverse rendering for solving material parameters without any path tracing.
• Add a differentiable evalAD function to IMaterialInstance and a differentiable setupDiffMaterialInstance to IMaterial.
• Implement evalAD and setupDiffMaterialInstance for PBRTDiffuseMaterial. Other types of materials have naive placeholders for now.
• Add a helper class GradientIOWrapper to set up the dataflow of scene gradients during backpropagation.
• Mark ShadingData and ShadingFrame as IDifferentiable.
• Add a unit test to check evalAD of PBRTDiffuseMaterial.
  Add helper classes for differentiable rendering:
• SceneManager: get/set scene parameters (only apply to the albedo value of PBRTDiffuse for now).
• SceneGradients: store scene gradients from backpropagation.

Python API

• Add interface for passing in an already created Device to Testbed.
• Add Python bindings for accessing Buffer as pytorch tensor.
• Add Python bindings for CUDA/Falcor sync.
• Add Python bindings for Program, ProgramDesc and ComputePass.
• Add a simple example using compute shaders from Python.
• Fix EnvMap Python constructor (they can't return null which we did when the file isn't found).
• Improve Testbed:
  • Add shader reloading on F5
  • Fix profiler toggling and render profiler even if UI is disabled
  • Fix show_ui
  • Add render_texture for setting a texture to be rendered on the window
  • Add should_close and close method for handling shutdown
  • Cleanup + comments
• Add Python bindings for program reflection types.
• Add Python bindings for ShaderVar.
• Add Python bindings to Texture for reading/writing subresources as numpy arrays.
• Add Python bindings to Buffer class:
  • Buffer properties
  • to_numpy/from_numpy to convert to/from numpy arrays
• Add Python bindings to Device class:
  • create_buffer, create_typed_buffer and create_structured_buffer
• Add initial Python bindings to CopyContext class.
• Add Python unit tests for buffer creation, writing and reading from/to numpy arrays.
• Add pybind11::falcor_enum helper to allow binding enums that already have string infos (using FALCOR_ENUM_INFO).
• Include pybind11/functional.h to get correct typing information on std::function types.
• Add Python bindings for Sampler class.
• Add [] accessor to RenderGraph Python bindings, allowing to access a pass through g["PathTracer"] for example.
• Add basic ImGUI wrapper with Python bindings in falcor.ui submodule.
• Only render UI for render graph / scene when they one is loaded.
• Add implicit conversion from python lists to vector types (allow assigning [10, 20, 30] instead of float3(10, 20, 30)).
• Python bindings for creating profiler events.

Cleanup

• Cleanup use of $for.. loops in shaders.
• Add comment about usage of SlangCompilationFlags::DumpIntermediates.
• Rename computeNewRayOrigin() to computeRayOrigin().
• Rename setShaderData to bindShaderData.
• Add FALCOR_EXPORT_D3D12_AGILITY_SDK to all sample applications.
• Apply clang-format on most render passes.
• Remove PythonDictionary class.
• Rename InternalDictionary to Dictionary.
• Disable clang-format argument bin packing.

Error Handling

• Fix fstd::source_location::current() on MSVC.
• Take std::string_view as message on Exception and descendants. Simplify the exception classes as they don't need to do string formatting anymore.
• FALCOR_GFX_CALL (gfxReportError handler) now handles NVIDIA Aftermath crash dumps before calling reportFatalErrorAndTerminate.
• msgBox creates a window that is always top-most (otherwise we got hidden windows if the main window was not open / already closed).
• Fix getStackTrace (need to create the TraceResolver first).
• Assertions now throw AssertionError exceptions which translate to Python.
• Add support for string message (and formatting) with FALCOR_ASSERT.
• Add ErrorDiagnosticFlags to control how errors are reported:
  • BreakOnThrow enables breaking into attached debugger when calling FALCOR_THROW (break on call-site).
  • BreakOnAssert enables breaking into attached debugger when calling FALCOR_ASSERT (break on call-site).
  • AppendStackTrace enables appending a stack trace to the exception message when calling FALCOR_THROW and FALCOR_ASSERT.
  • ShowMessageBoxOnError enables showing a message box when calling the reportError family of functions.
• Change reportError into reportErrorAndContinue to better describe what it is doing. This function no longer terminates the application.
• Change reportErrorAndAllowRetry to return true if user clicked Retry. This function no longer terminates the application.
• Change reportFatalError into reportFatalErrorAndTerminate to better describe what it is doing.
• Add catchAndReportAllExceptions that is now used in all sample applications to globally catch errors.
• Remove the local exception catching in SampleApp::run.
• Fix places where before we relied on application termination when using reportErrorAndAllowRetry. We now throw an exception.
• Replace calls to reportError with either one of these: exceptions, logging, show message box.
• Consolidate Core/Assert.h, Core/Errors.h and Core/ErrorHandling.h into Core/Error.h.
• Simplify error handling conventions in Falcor:
  • Use static_assert and FALCOR_ASSERT for assertions.
  • Use FALCOR_THROW and FALCOR_CHECK to throw RuntimeError exception.
  • Remove ArgumentError.
  • Remove checkArgument and checkInvariant and just use FALCOR_CHECK.
  • Replace all use of the FALCOR_CHECK_ARG_XXX macros with just FALCOR_CHECK.
  • Make FALCOR_UNIMPLEMENTED and FALCOR_UNREACHABLE throw exceptions instead of being assertions.
• Adjust conventions in error-handling.md.

Core

• Rename RenderContext::flush to RenderContext::submit.
• Rename Device::flushAndSync to Device::wait.
• Move state object creation to Device and simplify description structs.
• Remove profiler calls around Swapchain::present() (these calls crash on Vulkan and we probably don't need them so let's just get rid of them).
• Remove ProgramDesc::languagePrelude and Program::setLanguagePrelude.
• Add error checks for texture resource view creation that the right bind flags are set.
• Rename TextureManager::TextureHandle to TextureManager::CpuTextureHandle to avoid name clash with GPU-side TextureHandle.
• Add convenience functions to convert between CPU and GPU texture handles.
• Update TextureManager for safe resolve of UDIMs.
• Disable logging to a file when using Falcor from Python. Without this we litter the runtime folder with python.exe.X.log files.
• Add native AdapterLUID and AdapterInfo classes in Device.h.
• Rename GpuFence to Fence.
• Introduce FenceDesc and Fence::getDesc.
• Add CopyContext::signal and CopyContext::wait to handle fence signaling and waiting on the command queue.
• Remove GpuFence::syncGpu, instead clients need to call CopyContext::wait.
• Rename GpuFence::syncCpu to Fence::wait.
• Introduce signaled value which represents the last signaled value of the fence (this replaces the CPU value, which was always the last signaled value + 1).
• Introduce Fence::kAuto which replaces the std::optional we used before to differentiate between signaling specific fence values or auto-incrementing.
• Add Fence::updateSignaledValue which any signaler (host, device, external) can use to update the signaled value and/or get the auto-incremented value to signal.
• Introduce timeout when waiting on fence on host.
• Improve error handling for setting variables in ParameterBlock and through ShaderVar.
  • Throw exception when trying to bind a resource to a variable of a different type.
  • Throw exception when trying to bind a resource to a SRV that is not created with the ShaderResource flag.
  • Throw exception when trying to bind a resource to a UAV that is not created with the UnorderedAccess flag.
  • Throw exception when trying to get a resource from a variable of a different type.
  • Throw exception when trying to set a uniform variable with a different size/type.
• Reduce reference counting overhead for type information.
  • Lifetime is tied to the ParameterBlockReflection object. The TypedShaderVarOffset has a non-owning pointer to the type.
  • ShaderVar does not own either the pointer to ParameterBlock (same as before) or the type information.
• Add FALCOR_GFX_CALL checks to GFX dispatch calls.
• Use std::string_view for shader varia...

6.0

Overview

This release of Falcor provides the following significant improvements and new features:

• Initial work on making Falcor available as a Python module in an external Python environment.
• Introduce a plugin system for handling render passes and scene importers.
• Remove native D3D12 backend and switch to Slang/GFX exclusively for supporting both D3D12 and Vulkan.
• Remove legacy raster code that was not maintained and far from state-of-the-art.
• Replace glm with custom vector/matrix classes with more aligned sematics to Slang.
• Introduce intrusive reference counted Object base class and replace Type::SharedPtr with ref<Type>.
• Improved Linux support.
• Introduce clang-format for automatic code formatting of both C/C++ and Slang source files.

Dependencies

• Update slang to 2023.0.3.
• Update nvapi to R520.
• Update dlss to 3.1.0.
• Update ImGUI to latest docking branch.
• Update dxcompiler to 1.7.2207.
• Update Agility SDK to 1.606.3.
• Update assimp to 5.2.5.
• Update python to 3.10.11.
• Update USD to 22.11 and switch to no-python version.
• Update fmt to 10.0.0.
• Add nlohmann::json header-only library.
• Add pybind11_json header-only library.
• Switch from using RapidJSON to nlohmann::json.
• Stop including dependencies from tiny-cuda-nn globally into Falcor.

Project Structure

• Add new top-level scripts folder for render scripts.
• Add new top-level data folder that contains all the data that was before spread within the Source folder.
• Write plugin libraries (dlls) to a separate plugins folder, de-cluttering the main output folder.
• Reorganize media package:
  • Generally go to snake_case filenames.
  • Move everything into two folders: test_scenes and test_images.
  • Remove some obsolete files.

Tooling

• Add clang-format for automatic code formatting.
• Add .clang-format-ignore file to black-, and white-list paths.
• Enable clang-format on all of Source/Falcor/Core, Source/Falcor/RenderGraph, Source/Falcor/RenderPasses, Source/Tools, and Source/Samples.
• Add tools/update_comment_style script to automatically convert old to new comment style.
• Improve update_legal_headers.py to abort if git is unavailable and gracefully handle untracked files.
• Extend generate_stubs.py with support for generating bindings for python submodules.
• Add pymacro utility to expand PYMACRO macros in C++ code. This utility is used in VectorMath.h and the various VectorSwizzleX.inl.h files.

Coding Conventions

• Change the function comment coding convention for new code to utilize the existing tool support in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.
• Add coding rule that slang requires 1.f float literals.

Project Templates

• Rename PassLibraryTemplate to RenderPassTemplate.
• Rename ProjectTemplate to SampleAppTemplate.
• Rename make_new_render_pass_library to make_new_render_pass.
• Rename make_new_sample to make_new_sample_app.
• Build templates by default to avoid bitrot.

Build System

• Build with VS2022/14.4 toolchain by default
• Remove FALCOR_RENDER_BACKEND cmake option.
• Simplify build configurations because render backend configuration is gone now.
• Remove d3d12 flag from VS setup scripts.
• Fix missing includes.
• Extend header validation with option to ignore individual files.
• Add new cmake presets for building with additional settings for continuous integration.
• Use FALCOR_SLANG_CONFIG cmake cache option to switch between release and debug version of slang.
• Debug version of slang is only available if you build slang yourself and point packman to it, e.g., via dependencies.user.xml.
• Link args library directly in executables that use it.
• Make internal dependencies of Falcor private, add dependencies to render passes where required.
• Split falcor_deps into multiple finer grained targets.
• Silence finding git during configure time.
• Introduce FALCOR_ENABLE_USD to enable/disable compilation of components requiring USD.
• Use find_package to find a python distribution.
• Compile Falcor python bindings as a separate module and place it in the python directory in the output directory.
• Setup python search path to locate the falcor module when starting the embedded python interpreter.
• Move some targets to Misc folder in VS.
• Embed git version info in Falcor library.
• Log version string on startup, (e.g. Falcor 5.2 (commit: ab4852274, branch: git-version)).
• Copy scripts to binary output directory.
• Use lower-case shaders folder in binary output directory.
• Add FALCOR_REPORT_EXCEPTION_AS_ERROR cmake option to enable reporting exceptions as errors.
• Generate plugins.json in output directory containing a list of all plugins.
• Generate setpath.xxx scripts in output directory.
• Generate python stub files for the falcor module.
• Rename CMake preset linux-ninja-clang to linux-clang.
• Add support for compiling with GCC (add linux-gcc CMake preset).
• Compile with _GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI=0 for compatibility with USD libraries.
• Increase MSVC warnings to /W4 and disable some specific warnings.
• Generally enable "shadowing" warnings which avoids non-obvious bugs and paves the way to use text replacement for removing hungerian notation.
• Add FALCOR_ENABLE_ASAN cmake option to enable address sanitizer.

Remove Legacy Code

• Remove VariablesBufferUI.
• Remove CUDAProgram.
• Remove EnvMapLighting.
• Remove Perception utils.
• Remove ModelViewer sample.
• Remove RTXGI module.
• Remove CSM render pass.
• Remove FXAA render passes.
• Remove SSAO render pass.
• Remove SkyBox render pass.
• Remove ForwardLightingPass render pass.
• Remove DepthPass render pass.
• Remove TemporalDelayPass render pass.

Falcor Python Module

• Falcor no longer requires exact 3.7 Python version.
• Rename Falcor python extension module from falcor to falcor_ext and wrap it in a falcor package that sets up the DLL search directory.
• Fix Python naming conventions in the bindings of the following classes: Texture, Testbed, RenderGraph, AABB, Rectangle, Profiler
  • Note: old bindings are still available but marked PYTHONDEPRECATED, with the exception of Profiler
• Cleanup RenderGraph bindings and write render graphs with RenderPass.create_pass instead of free standing createPass followed by addPass.
• Remove obsolete bindings for DeviceDesc, SampleAppDesc and WindowDesc.
• Add initial bindings for Device, Resource, Texture, Buffer, CopyContext, ComputeContext, RenderContext
• Add initial python test that just instantiates a Device.
• Add new Testbed application class for running Falcor from Python interpreter.
• Automatically release Falcor python module handle using python's atexit infrastructure.
• Allow Testbed to run in headless mode (enabled by default).
• Add a mechanism to detect if falcor Python module is loaded from the embedded interpreter or not.
• Attempt to load Agility SDK when using falcor from the Python interpreter.
• Add pybind11 backport of nanobind ndarray class supporting both python buffer protocol and dlpack for CPU/GPU tensor exchange.

Plugin System

• Introduces a new more generic plugin system, replacing the RenderPassLibrary and allowing for new plugin types.
• Add PluginManager for loading/unloading plugins, querying plugin information and creating plugin instances.
• Add FALCOR_PLUGIN_BASE_CLASS macro for extending a base class to be used as a plugin interface.
• Add FALCOR_PLUGIN_CLASS macro for extending a class to be used as a plugin class.
• Rename getPasses in render pass libraries to registerPlugin and use new register mechanism.
• Minor adjustments in render pass libraries to make compatible with new plugin system.
• Rename cmake add_renderpass macro to add_plugin.
• Always load all plugins at startup based on the plugins/plugins.json index file.

Cleanup Globals

• Tag globals to be removed using // TODO: REMOVEGLOBAL.
• Remove global gpDevice device pointer.
• Remove Renderer and Framework interfaces.
• Rename Sample to SampleApp and refactor to not rely on Renderer and Framework interfaces.
• Rename SampleConfig to SampleAppConfig.
• Remove global gpFramework pointer.
• Remove gMainWindowHandle and setMainWindowHandle.
• Convert TextRenderer from singleton to a normal class.
• Cleanup TextRenderer and Font and enable clang-format.
• Make QueryHeap and GpuMemoryHeap having non-owning reference to device.
• Remove global in RenderContext.
• Remove global createRenderGraph() and loadRenderGraph() in Falcor for Python. Use testbed.createRenderGraph() and testbed.loadRenderGraph() instead.
• Remove global createPass() in Falcor for Python. Use RenderGraph.createPass() instead.
• Keep device in a std::unique_ptr<Device> in SampleApp and Testbed to better indicated ownership.
• Add SharedCache utility class for managing shared global data.
• Use SharedCache in FullScreenPass.
• Use SharedCache in to replace global SDF GPU data.
• Make Device own the Profiler.
• Also use non-owning pointer to device in CopyContext/ComputeContext/RenderContext as the life-time of these are tied to the device.
• Manage multiple ImGui contexts.
• Add support managing a list of images in the GUI context to get rid of globals.
• Allow creating multiple Testbed instances.
• Handle multiple GUI contexts.
• Add image caching in GUI system to remove global clock image textures.

Cleanup

• Prefer using static constexpr in class/struct scoped constants.
• Rewrite T const& to const T& which is the prevalent convention in Falcor.

Intrusive reference ...

6.0-preview2

Overview

This release of Falcor provides the following significant improvements and new features:

• Initial work on making Falcor available as a Python module in an external Python environment.
• Introduce a plugin system for handling render passes and scene importers.
• Remove native D3D12 backend and switch to Slang/GFX exclusively for supporting both D3D12 and Vulkan.
• Remove legacy raster code that was not maintained and far from state-of-the-art.
• Replace glm with custom vector/matrix classes with more aligned sematics to Slang.
• Introduce intrusive reference counted Object base class and replace Type::SharedPtr with ref<Type>.
• Improved Linux support.
• Introduce clang-format for automatic code formatting of both C/C++ and Slang source files.

Dependencies

• Update slang to version 0.27.14.
• Update nvapi to version R520.
• Update dlss to version 3.1.0.
• Update ImGUI to latest docking branch.
• Update dxcompiler to 1.7.2207.
• Update Agility SDK to 1.606.3.
• Update assimp to version 5.2.5.
• Update python to 3.10.11.
• Update USD to 22.11 and switch to no-python version.
• Add nlohmann::json header-only library.
• Add pybind11_json header-only library.
• Switch from using RapidJSON to nlohmann::json.
• Stop including dependencies from tiny-cuda-nn globally into Falcor.

Project Structure

• Add new top-level scripts folder for render scripts.
• Add new top-level data folder that contains all the data that was before spread within the Source folder.
• Write plugin libraries (dlls) to a separate plugins folder, de-cluttering the main output folder.

Tooling

• Add clang-format for automatic code formatting.
• Add .clang-format-ignore file to black-, and white-list paths.
• Enable clang-format on all of Source/Falcor/Core, Source/Falcor/RenderGraph, Source/Falcor/RenderPasses, Source/Tools, and Source/Samples.
• Add tools/update_comment_style script to automatically convert old to new comment style.
• Improve update_legal_headers.py to abort if git is unavailable and gracefully handle untracked files.
• Extend generate_stubs.py with support for generating bindings for python submodules.
• Add pymacro utility to expand PYMACRO macros in C++ code. This utility is used in VectorMath.h and the various VectorSwizzleX.inl.h files.

Coding Conventions

• Change the function comment coding convention for new code to utilize the existing tool support in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.
• Add coding rule that slang requires 1.f float literals.

Project Templates

• Rename PassLibraryTemplate to RenderPassTemplate.
• Rename ProjectTemplate to SampleAppTemplate.
• Rename make_new_render_pass_library to make_new_render_pass.
• Rename make_new_sample to make_new_sample_app.
• Build templates by default to avoid bitrot.

Build System

• Build with VS2022/14.4 toolchain by default
• Remove FALCOR_RENDER_BACKEND cmake option.
• Simplify build configurations because render backend configuration is gone now.
• Remove d3d12 flag from VS setup scripts.
• Fix missing includes.
• Extend header validation with option to ignore individual files.
• Add new cmake presets for building with additional settings for continuous integration.
• Use FALCOR_SLANG_CONFIG cmake cache option to switch between release and debug version of slang.
• Debug version of slang is only available if you build slang yourself and point packman to it, e.g., via dependencies.user.xml.
• Link args library directly in executables that use it.
• Make internal dependencies of Falcor private, add dependencies to render passes where required.
• Split falcor_deps into multiple finer grained targets.
• Silence finding git during configure time.
• Introduce FALCOR_ENABLE_USD to enable/disable compilation of components requiring USD.
• Use find_package to find a python distribution.
• Compile Falcor python bindings as a separate module and place it in the python directory in the output directory.
• Setup python search path to locate the falcor module when starting the embedded python interpreter.
• Move some targets to Misc folder in VS.
• Embed git version info in Falcor library.
• Log version string on startup, (e.g. Falcor 5.2 (commit: ab4852274, branch: git-version)).
• Copy scripts to binary output directory.
• Use lower-case shaders folder in binary output directory.
• Add FALCOR_REPORT_EXCEPTION_AS_ERROR cmake option to enable reporting exceptions as errors.
• Generate plugins.json in output directory containing a list of all plugins.
• Generate setpath.xxx scripts in output directory.
• Generate python stub files for the falcor module.
• Rename CMake preset linux-ninja-clang to linux-clang.
• Add support for compiling with GCC (add linux-gcc CMake preset).
• Compile with _GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI=0 for compatibility with USD libraries.
• Increase MSVC warnings to /W4 and disable some specific warnings.
• Generally enable "shadowing" warnings which avoids non-obvious bugs and paves the way to use text replacement for removing hungerian notation.

Remove Legacy Code

• Remove VariablesBufferUI.
• Remove CUDAProgram.
• Remove EnvMapLighting.
• Remove Perception utils.
• Remove ModelViewer sample.
• Remove RTXGI module.
• Remove CSM render pass.
• Remove FXAA render passes.
• Remove SSAO render pass.
• Remove SkyBox render pass.
• Remove ForwardLightingPass render pass.
• Remove DepthPass render pass.
• Remove TemporalDelayPass render pass.

Falcor Python Module

• Falcor no longer requires exact 3.7 Python version.
• Rename Falcor python extension module from falcor to falcor_ext and wrap it in a falcor package that sets up the DLL search directory.
• Fix Python naming conventions in the bindings of the following classes: Texture, Testbed, RenderGraph, AABB, Rectangle, Profiler
  • Note: old bindings are still available but marked PYTHONDEPRECATED, with the exception of Profiler
• Cleanup RenderGraph bindings and write render graphs with RenderPass.create_pass instead of free standing createPass followed by addPass.
• Remove obsolete bindings for DeviceDesc, SampleAppDesc and WindowDesc.
• Add initial bindings for Device, Resource, Texture, Buffer, CopyContext, ComputeContext, RenderContext
• Add initial python test that just instantiates a Device.
• Add new Testbed application class for running Falcor from Python interpreter.
• Automatically release Falcor python module handle using python's atexit infrastructure.
• Allow Testbed to run in headless mode (enabled by default).
• Add a mechanism to detect if falcor Python module is loaded from the embedded interpreter or not.
• Attempt to load Agility SDK when using falcor from the Python interpreter.
• Add pybind11 backport of nanobind ndarray class supporting both python buffer protocol and dlpack for CPU/GPU tensor exchange.

Plugin System

• Introduces a new more generic plugin system, replacing the RenderPassLibrary and allowing for new plugin types.
• Add PluginManager for loading/unloading plugins, querying plugin information and creating plugin instances.
• Add FALCOR_PLUGIN_BASE_CLASS macro for extending a base class to be used as a plugin interface.
• Add FALCOR_PLUGIN_CLASS macro for extending a class to be used as a plugin class.
• Rename getPasses in render pass libraries to registerPlugin and use new register mechanism.
• Minor adjustments in render pass libraries to make compatible with new plugin system.
• Rename cmake add_renderpass macro to add_plugin.
• Always load all plugins at startup based on the plugins/plugins.json index file.

Cleanup Globals

• Tag globals to be removed using // TODO: REMOVEGLOBAL.
• Remove global gpDevice device pointer.
• Remove Renderer and Framework interfaces.
• Rename Sample to SampleApp and refactor to not rely on Renderer and Framework interfaces.
• Rename SampleConfig to SampleAppConfig.
• Remove global gpFramework pointer.
• Remove gMainWindowHandle and setMainWindowHandle.
• Convert TextRenderer from singleton to a normal class.
• Cleanup TextRenderer and Font and enable clang-format.
• Make QueryHeap and GpuMemoryHeap having non-owning reference to device.
• Remove global in RenderContext.
• Remove global createRenderGraph() and loadRenderGraph() in Falcor for Python. Use testbed.createRenderGraph() and testbed.loadRenderGraph() instead.
• Remove global createPass() in Falcor for Python. Use RenderGraph.createPass() instead.
• Keep device in a std::unique_ptr<Device> in SampleApp and Testbed to better indicated ownership.
• Add SharedCache utility class for managing shared global data.
• Use SharedCache in FullScreenPass.
• Use SharedCache in to replace global SDF GPU data.
• Make Device own the Profiler.
• Also use non-owning pointer to device in CopyContext/ComputeContext/RenderContext as the life-time of these are tied to the device.
• Manage multiple ImGui contexts.
• Add support managing a list of images in the GUI context to get rid of globals.
• Allow creating multiple Testbed instances.
• Handle multiple GUI contexts.
• Add image caching in GUI system to remove global clock image textures.

Cleanup

• Prefer using static constexpr in class/struct scoped constants.
• Rewrite T const& to const T& which is the prevalent convention in Falcor.

Intrusive reference counting

• Add Object base class for reference counted objects.
• Add ref<T> reference counting helper to reference objects derived from Object.
• Add BreakableReference type, to allow a subset of API classes to break their strong referen...

6.0-preview

Overview

This release of Falcor provides the following significant improvements and new features:

• Initial work on making Falcor available as a Python module in an external Python environment.
• Introduce a plugin system for handling render passes and scene importers.
• Remove native D3D12 backend and switch to Slang/GFX exclusively for supporting both D3D12 and Vulkan.
• Remove legacy raster code that was not maintained and far from state-of-the-art.
• Introduce clang-format for automatic code formatting of both C/C++ and Slang source files.

Dependencies

• Update slang to version 0.24.52.
• Update nvapi to version R520.
• Update dlss to version 3.1.0.
• Update ImGUI to latest docking branch.
• Update dxcompiler to 1.7.2207.
• Update Agility SDK to 1.606.3.
• Add nlohmann::json header-only library.
• Add pybind11_json header-only library.
• Switch from using RapidJSON to nlohmann::json.
• Stop including dependencies from tiny-cuda-nn globally into Falcor.

Project Structure

• Add new top-level scripts folder for render scripts.
• Add new top-level data folder that contains all the data that was before spread within the Source folder.
• Write plugin libraries (dlls) to a separate plugins folder, de-cluttering the main output folder.

Tooling

• Add clang-format for automatic code formatting.
• Add .clang-format-ignore file to black-, and white-list paths.
• Enable clang-format on all of Source/Falcor/Core, Source/Tools, and Source/Samples.
• Add tools/update_comment_style script to automatically convert old to new comment style.
• Improve update_legal_headers.py to abort if git is unavailable and gracefully handle untracked files.
• Extend generate_stubs.py with support for generating bindings for python submodules.

Coding Conventions

• Change the function comment coding convention for new code to utilize the existing tool support in Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.
• Add coding rule that slang requires 1.f float literals.

Project Templates

• Rename PassLibraryTemplate to RenderPassTemplate.
• Rename ProjectTemplate to SampleAppTemplate.
• Rename make_new_render_pass_library to make_new_render_pass.
• Rename make_new_sample to make_new_sample_app.
• Build templates by default to avoid bitrot.

Build System

• Remove FALCOR_RENDER_BACKEND cmake option.
• Simplify build configurations because render backend configuration is gone now.
• Remove d3d12 flag from VS setup scripts.
• Fix missing includes.
• Extend header validation with option to ignore individual files.
• Add new cmake presets for building with additional settings for continuous integration.
• Use FALCOR_SLANG_CONFIG cmake cache option to switch between release and debug version of slang.
• Debug version of slang is only available if you build slang yourself and point packman to it, e.g., via dependencies.user.xml.
• Link args library directly in executables that use it.
• Make internal dependencies of Falcor private, add dependencies to render passes where required.
• Split falcor_deps into multiple finer grained targets.
• Silence finding git during configure time.
• Introduce FALCOR_ENABLE_USD to enable/disable compilation of components requiring USD.
• Use find_package to find a python distribution.
• Compile Falcor python bindings as a separate module and place it in the python directory in the output directory.
• Setup python search path to locate the falcor module when starting the embedded python interpreter.
• Move some targets to Misc folder in VS.
• Embed git version info in Falcor library.
• Log version string on startup, (e.g. Falcor 5.2 (commit: ab4852274, branch: git-version)).
• Copy scripts to binary output directory.
• Use lower-case shaders folder in binary output directory.
• Add FALCOR_REPORT_EXCEPTION_AS_ERROR cmake option to enable reporting exceptions as errors.
• Generate plugins.json in output directory containing a list of all plugins.
• Generate setpath.xxx scripts in output directory.
• Generate python stub files for the falcor module.

Remove Legacy Code

• Remove VariablesBufferUI.
• Remove CUDAProgram.
• Remove EnvMapLighting.
• Remove Perception utils.
• Remove ModelViewer sample.
• Remove RTXGI module.
• Remove CSM render pass.
• Remove FXAA render passes.
• Remove SSAO render pass.
• Remove SkyBox render pass.
• Remove ForwardLightingPass render pass.
• Remove DepthPass render pass.
• Remove TemporalDelayPass render pass.

Falcor Python Module

• Add new Testbed application class for running Falcor from Python interpreter.
• Automatically release Falcor python module handle using python's atexit infrastructure.
• Allow Testbed to run in headless mode (enabled by default).
• Add a mechanism to detect if falcor Python module is loaded from the embedded interpreter or not.
• Attempt to load Agility SDK when using falcor from the Python interpreter.

Plugin System

• Introduces a new more generic plugin system, replacing the RenderPassLibrary and allowing for new plugin types.
• Add PluginManager for loading/unloading plugins, querying plugin information and creating plugin instances.
• Add FALCOR_PLUGIN_BASE_CLASS macro for extending a base class to be used as a plugin interface.
• Add FALCOR_PLUGIN_CLASS macro for extending a class to be used as a plugin class.
• Rename getPasses in render pass libraries to registerPlugin and use new register mechanism.
• Minor adjustments in render pass libraries to make compatible with new plugin system.
• Rename cmake add_renderpass macro to add_plugin.
• Always load all plugins at startup based on the plugins/plugins.json index file.

Cleanup Globals

• Tag globals to be removed using // TODO: REMOVEGLOBAL.
• Remove global gpDevice device pointer.
• Add getGlobalDevice() as a temporary way of still accessing the global pointer until the refactor is done.
• Remove Renderer and Framework interfaces.
• Rename Sample to SampleApp and refactor to not rely on Renderer and Framework interfaces.
• Rename SampleConfig to SampleAppConfig.
• Remove global gpFramework pointer.

Graphics API

• Report GFX/D3D12 live objects on shutdown in debug builds (helps debugging clean shutdown).
• Cleanup resource format list to match what we have in gfx.
• Add conversion to native Vulkan formats.
• Move utilities for conversion to native formats to NativeFormats.h (reduce d3d12/vulkan header exposure).
• Add NativeHandle used for passing native graphics API handles.
• Add support for querying both D3D12 and Vulkan native handles.
• Move D3D12 specific code into Shared directory (specifically ConstantBufferView).
• Remove most obsolete handle definitions in D3D12Handles.h.
• Simplify ResourceView base class.
• Work towards not exposing d3d12.h and vulkan.h by default, only where it's actually used.
• Enable shader cache by default.
• Add Swapchain class.
• Remove implicit swapchain and framebuffer handling from Device.
• Add mechanism for passing a shader prelude to the downstream compiler.
• Pass NVAPI search path to dxc.
• Add ShaderExecutionReorderingAPI and RaytracingReordering feature flag.
• Add support for creating device on specific graphics adapter.
• Remove documentation of FALCOR_GPU_VENDOR_ID and FALCOR_GPU_DEVICE_ID which are no longer supported.
• Remove FALCOR_D3D12 and FALCOR_GFX macros.
• Remove most handle types and replace with gfx types directly.
• Use gfx::BufferResource and gfx::ImageResource to reduce amount of casting.
• Add device limits to remove D3D12 specific code.
• Remove global blit context.
• Merge all GFX sources in Source/Falcor/Core/API/GFX into the main source files in Source/Falcor/Core/API.
• Remove D3D12 backend sources in Source/Falcor/Core/API/D3D12.
• Replace [__unsafeForceInlineEarly] with new [ForceInline].
• Fix GFXParameterBlock to own resources that are assigned with setBuffer.
• Fix to_string for ShaderType.
• Check for Device::SupportedFeatures::WaveOperations in GFXDevice.
• Add additional FALCOR_GFX_CALL checks and improve logging of failures.
• Replace static configuration of GFX device type with the option to set device type at runtime.
• Add runtime checks for D3D12 (requireD3D12()) to throw an exception not having D3D12 available.
• Throw when trying to create invalid entry points on an RtProgram.
• Pass RenderContext to profile calls.
• Add Device::enableAgilitySDK() to load Agility SDK at runtime.
• Add getImage and getData functions to Texture Python API, allowing to get images as numpy arrays.
• Fix depth clip flag in gfx rasterizer state.
• Disable slang conversion warnings.

Core

• Search paths in Settings are now always weakly cannonicalized.
• Break into debugger if error message box is disabled.
• Add setKeyboardInterruptHandler() in OS.h for setting up a callback for Ctrl-C.
• Add operator< on floatX and intX types.
• Remove postQuitMessage function.
• Fix return code handling in SampleApp.
• Extend SampleApp to allow for running without creating a window/swapchain (headless mode).
• Do not create FBOs for swapchain images but copy final output to swapchain image instead.
• Rename SampleApp::onResourceSwapChain() to SampleApp::onResize().
• Add Window::setWindowIcon() function.
• Disable show error message box by default.
• Introduce settings.json, JSON config file that allows specifying global options by placing it in ~/.falcor/settings.json.
  • Supports ["standardsearchpath"] and ["searchpath"].
  • Within these, supports category = "path1;path2;&;@" or ``category = ["path1", "path2", "&", "@"]`
  • The & gets replaced b...

5.2

Overview

This release of Falcor provides the following significant improvements and new features:

• Switch to the CMake build system.
• Cleanup project folder structure.
• Major cleanup to make include files self-sufficient.
• Replace use of glm matrices with new matrices in rmcv (row-major column-vector) namespace to match layout on the shader side.
• Experimental support for running on Linux.

Build System

• Remove native Visual Studio solution/project files.
• Add CMake build scripts.
• Add setup.bat, setup_vs2019.bat and setup_vs2022.bat convenience scripts to fetch dependencies and setup VS solutions.
• Cleanup a lot of #ifdef FALCOR_ENABLE_XXX code in files that are now only compiled if the library is available.
• Rename FALCOR_ENABLE_XXX to FALCOR_USE_XXX to be consistent with CMake variables.
• Initial support for compiling/running on Linux.
• Add FALCOR_HAS_D3D12 and FALCOR_HAS_VULKAN feature flags in CMake and pass them as compile definitions.
• Replace FALCOR_D3D12_AVAILABLE with FALCOR_HAS_D3D12.
• Remove obsolete guards around FALCOR_EXPORT_D3D12_AGILITY_SDK.
• Replace #pragma comment(lib, xxx) directives with explicit linking from CMake.
• Use CMake to detect if certain libraries are available instead of relying on #defines in FalcorConfig.h.
• Conditionally compile NRDPass, DLSSPass and OptixDenoiser.
• Conditionally compile RTXGIPass, NRDPass, NGXDenoiser, DLDenoiserPass and DeepLearningPass when D3D12 is available.
• Link hdf5 debug library in debug config.
• Add ninja_log_analyzer.py script to parse ninja build log files and show total build time as well as most expensive targets.
• Add FALCOR_PRECOMPILED_HEADERS cache variable to enable/disable precompiled headers.
• Fix build if precompiled headers are disabled.
• Replace #pragma inline manifest with external Falcor.manifest file.
• Make all samples console applications.
• Enable /W2 warning level and /WX (warnings as errors).

VS Code

• Add .vscode-default folder containing sensible default configuration for VS Code.
• Copy .vscode-default to .vscode in setup.bat/setup.sh if it doesn't exist. This sets up the VS Code workspace on initial setup.
• Add recommended VS Code extensions (C++, CMake Tools + language support, editorconfig, Slang language support).

Dependencies

• Update CUDA to version 11.6.2.
• Update Slang to version 0.24.11
• Update falcor_dependencies.
• Update nanovdb to a recent version.
• Add cmake and ninja to tools.

Project Structure

• Rename Tools directory to tools.
• Move Build/packman to tools/packman.
• Rename Build to build_scripts.
• Rename Media to media.
• Rename Tests to tests.
• Rename Docs to docs and move to lower-case file names.
• Consolidate packman dependencies to one global dependencies.xml in the root.
• Move tools to create sample and render pass library to tools directory.
• Remove obsolete scripts.
• Cleanup arguments passed to deployment scripts.
• Establish external as the new location for third party libraries.
  • Add git submodules for the following libraries: glfw, glm, imgui, pybind11, fmt, args.
  • Add mikktspace as local files.
  • Remove the same libraries from prebuilt falcor_dependencies, which now only contains the big libraries expensive to build.
  • Add automatic initialization of git submodules in setup.bat as well as during configure time (only if not present).
  • Move header-only libraries to external/include.
• Cleanup .editorconfig, remove hard setting line endings to CRLF (use native line ending instead).
• Add .gitattributes file with * text=auto.
• Renormalize existing files in repository to use LF instead of CRLF (only 3 files affected).

Cleanup

• Remove stdafx precompiled headers.
• Remove #include <Falcor.h> in all headers in the main Falcor library.
• Remove includes in Falcor.h, only Core/ and Scene/ includes remain.
• Factor out global macros in Framework.h into separate Macros.h file.
• Factor out global assert macros in Framework.h into separate Assert.h file.
• Move definitions of FALCOR_HAS_D3D12_AGILITY_SDK and FALCOR_NVAPI_AVAILABLE into Macros.h
• Remove has_vtable and use std::is_polymorphic instead.
• Don't use deprecated std::iterator (avoids compiler warnings).
• Move implementation of Buffer::adjustSizeOffsetParams to cpp file.
• Move uint typedef from HostDeviceShared.slangh to Vector.h to make it available on host in the context of using other vector types like uint2, uint3 and uint4.
• Remove use of raw pointers for object ownership.
• Remove arraysize() helper and use std::size() instead.
• Move clamp, lerp, isPowerOf2, div_round_up and align_to from Framework.h to Utils/Math/Common.h.
• Move HotReloadFlags to new HotReloadFlags.h.
• Move FboAttachementType to RenderContext.h.
• Move ShaderType to Shader.h.
• Move ComparisonFunc to API/Common.h.
• Move fmt formatters to Utils/StringFormatters.h.
• Add Platform/PlatformHandles.h.
• Add Utils/Math/Matrix.h.
• Fix includes for rest of the Falcor library, all header files are now self-sufficient.
• Fix includes in FalcorInternal library, all header files are now self-sufficient.
• Get rid of including Framework.h in any of the include files in Falcor and FalcorInternal.
• Add header validation targets for Falcor and FalcorInternal to allow compiling every header as a separate translation unit to ensure it is self-sufficient. Enabled using cache variable FALCOR_VALIDATE_HEADERS.
• Define graphics API handles in Core/API/D3D12/D3D12Handles.h and Core/API/GFX/GFXHandles.h (common include is Core/API/Handles.h).
• Define graphics API helpers in Core/API/D3D12/D3D12API.h and Core/API/GFX/GFXAPI.h (common include is Core/API/API.h).
• Remove FalcorD3D12.h and FalcorGFX.h.
• Move RayFlags and getRaytracingMaxAttributeSize to Raytracing.h.
• Remove Framework.h, moving exported includes to Falcor.h.
• Cleanup #include "" vs. #include <> use.
• Update coding conventions section on include files.
• Fix this == nullptr undefined behavior.
• Add RenderData::getTexture() to directly get a texture and replaced all renderData["texture"]->asTexture() with renderData.getTexture("texture").
• Fix static_asserts in constexpr context.
• Move static class template specialization out of class body.
• Add missing virtual destructor to BaseConverter.
• Implement SHA1 to remove dependency to openssl/libcrypto.
• Provide DXGI_FORMAT if dxgiformat.h header is not available.

Linux Support

• Replace .dll with .so when loading a render pass.
• Implement MonitorInfo on Linux using GLFW.

C++20 preparation

• Move span/span.h to fstd/span.h and replace tcp::span with fstd::span.
• Introduce fstd/bit.h as a replacement for <bit>.
• Replace getNextPowerOf2 with std::bit_ceil and getLowerPowerOf2 with std::bit_floor.
• Fix usage of libfmt API.
• Fix format strings (found while enabling compile time format string checks testing C++20).

Core

• Updates due to changes in pnanovdb API.
• Add FALCOR_ENABLE_RENDER_PASS_HOT_RELOAD define (defaults to 0) to disable.
• Do not copy render pass DLLs to temporary files when hot reloading is disabled.
• Fix misleading parameter names in the TLAS build.
• Add interfaces for specifying Slang source handling.
• Add unit tests for string based Slang shader creation.
• Add means to force all shaders to have some compiler flags on and off.
• Detect target platform and set FALCOR_PLATFORM.
• Convenience macros for checking platform: FALCOR_WINDOWS and FALCOR_LINUX
• Detect compiler and set FALCOR_COMPILER
• Convenience macros for checking compiler: FALCOR_MSVC, FALCOR_CLANG and FALCOR_GCC.
• Make use of platform/compiler defines.
• Add unit tests for StructuredBuffer matrix types.
• Add unit test for ByteAddressBuffer templated loads.
• Add Program::ShaderModule helper to represent a Slang module stored as a string or file.
• Add Program::Desc interfaces for adding a shader module or list of modules.
• Remove unnecessary ShaderLibrary class.
• Fix shader reflection of fp16 matrix types.
• Add support to get current peak resident set size to control memory used.
• Clock can now loop the frame time, to replay animation.
• Add optional CameraController bounding box clamp.
• Improve error handling of type conformances in program creation.

Misc

• The lerp function can now lerp non-float types (e.g., matrices or vectors).
• Henyey-Greenstein anisotropy bugfix.
• Optimize RayCones::computeLOD().
• Remove computeLOD() that used texture dimensions as input. This function is not used.
• Add support for general Options (nested dictionaries, can look up in the Renderman-compatible way of "dict0:dict1"). The current options are limited to controlling the usdImporter
• Add support for general Attributes. For example usdImporter:enableMotion is true by default. Can be overriden by also setting usdImporter:enableMotion.filter, which can be either a regex of shape names to which to apply the attribute. Or a list of 1 or 2 items, where first is the regex and the second is True when the Attribute should be applied to all shapes whose name does NOT match the regex. There can be only one such Attribute, which is a limitation that will be lifted in the future.
• Add Attribute controls for curve tessellation (curves:mode, subdivPerSegment, keepOneEveryXStrands, keepOneEveryXVerticesPerStrand)
• Add an Attribute to convert disk light into a mesh.
• Add Options to control the default behavior of Mogwai controls (hidden or showing).

Matrix Libray

• Replace GLM (col major) with rmcv (row-majo...

5.1

Overview

This release of Falcor provides the following significant improvements and new features:

• Improved NRD denoiser, especially for denoising path traced signals.
• Improved sampling of specular surfaces when using RTXDI.
• A new scene importer for pbrt-v4 scenes. This allows to load most of the scenes from the rendering resources page (https://benedikt-bitterli.me/resources).
• Fully functional rendering backend based on Slang GFX supporting D3D12 and Vulkan (still experimental).
• Shipping with the following RTX SDKs out of the box: DLSS, RTXGI, RTXDI, NRD (note that they not covered by the same license as Falcor).

Dependencies

• Update packman to version 6.42.
• Automatically fetch RTX SDKs (DLSS, RTXGI, RTXDI, NRD) instead of requiring manual installation.
• Update falcor_dependencies package (recent versions of OSS libraries).
• Add pugixml library to falcor_depedencies.
• Remove DirectXTex library from falcor_depenencies.
• Add fstd::span, an implementation of C++20 std::span.
• Link zlib into Falcor.dll.
• Update Slang to version 0.23.7.
• Update usage of FFMPEG API (av_init_packet is deprecated).

Core

• Use std::filesystem::path instead of std::string for referring to file paths.
• Add support for logging std::filesystem::path objects using fmt::format.
• Rename filename argument to path in many places.
• Rename ShaderLibrary::getFilename() to ShaderLibrary::getPath().
• Rename EnvMap::getFilename() to EnvMap::getPath().
• Rename Scene::getFilename() to Scene::getPath().
• Remove doesFileExist, isDirectoryExists, createDirectory, canonicalizeFilename, getDirectoryFromFile, getExtensionFromFile, getFilenameFromPath, swapFileExtension, enumerateFiles
• Rename getTempFilename to getTempFilePath.
• Rename DllHandle to SharedLibraryHandle.
• Rename loadDll to loadSharedLibrary.
• Rename releaseDll to releaseSharedLibrary.
• Rename getDllProcAddress to getProcAddress.
• Replace calls to std::remove with std::filesystem::remove.
• Expose std::filesystem::path for file path options in render passes. This allows to use pathlib.Path on the Python side.
• Add decompressFile function.
• Add support for loading .gz files in TriangleMesh::createFromFile().
• Add TriangleMesh::applyTransform() taking a raw matrix.
• Take std::string_view format strings on exception constructors.
• Cast enum class values to integers when passing to fmt::format (new versions don't support implicit conversion).
• Fix handling creation of RasterPass and RasterScenePass with empty vertex shader entry point.
• Add IDScope helper class to create ImGui ID scopes (using ImGui::PushID/PopID).
• Add ID scopes to render graph UI to allow for multiple instances of the same render pass.
• Add a global input state class that can be used to check the states of keys and mouse buttons.
• Add functions for checking if keys, modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, and Shift), and mouse buttons are held down, just pressed, and just released.
• Move the Key enum class to a new namespace called Input.
• Add enums for modifiers and mouse buttons inside the Input namespace.
• Change the types of the MouseEvent to be ButtonDown and ButtonUp instead of types specific for the three buttons left, middle and right.
• Replace InputModifer with ModifierFlags in the MouseEvent and KeyboardEvent structs.
• Make the InputState class accessible from the gpFramework pointer in the Sample class.
• Add gamepad support.
  • Add GamepadButton, GamepadEvent and GamepadState to represent gamepad events and state.
  • Extend IRenderer with onGamepadEvent and onGamepadState members.
• Add gamepad support to CameraController.
• Add hasExtension() to check for file extensions using case-insensitive comparison.
• Rename getExtensionFromFile() to getExtensionFromPath() and return lower-case strings.
• Add FALCOR_ASSERT_MSG macro for asserts with messages.
• Add additional assert macros (FALCOR_ASSERT_EQ, FALCOR_ASSERT_NE etc.) to print values when a comparison assert fails.
• Add FALCOR_PRINT convenience macro for printing variable name + value.
• Add workarounds for missing profiler GPU timing synchronization.
• Skip first frame to not include zero timings in captured profiling data.

API

• Fix binding both UAV and SRV of the same resource.
• Add a FALCOR_D3D12_AVAILABLE macro that is defined to be 1 for both D3D12 and GFX backend.
• Move D3D12DescriptorSet, D3D12DescriptorPool, D3D12DescriptorHeap, D3D12RootSignature to be conditional behind FALCOR_D3D12_AVAILABLE instead of FALCOR_D3D12, so these classes are usable when using GFX.
• Add getD3D12Handle in addition to the existing getApiHandle method to several classes so that D3D12 specific user code can use them to get d3d12 handles regardless of whether GFX or D3D12 backend is in use.
• Get rid of the use of ParameterBlock::getUnderlyingConstantBuffer by using a mocked ID3D12Resource implementation that allows obtaining the updated constant buffer data from RTXGI SDK without reading back from GPU memory, so we can use the normal ParameterBlock::setBlob to update the parameter block.
• Enables NRD pass, RTXGIVolume, RTXGI, DeepLearningPass, DLDenoiser pass to be used in GFX.
• Move RtProgramVars::init from D3D12ProgramVars.cpp to ProgramVars.cpp
• Move getUniqueRtEntryPointGroupKernels from D3D12ProgramVars.cpp to ProgramVars.cpp
• Move all contents in ShaderTable.cpp to D3DShaderTable.cpp making it D3D12 only. GFX's IShaderTable abstraction can be directly used by RtProgramVars to implement its functionality.
• Add device caps check for wave operations support.
• Extend Program to allow setting type conformances per entry point hit group.
• Add optional entry point name suffix per entry point in RtProgram::Desc.
• Add validation that all entry points names are unique.
• Cleanup of Program construction and registration for hot reload.

Shaders

• Remove implicit setting of defaultVS vertex shader entry point.
• Consistently using vsMain and psMain as entry point names.
• Consistently using .3d.slang extension for shaders containing both VS and PS entry points.

Scene

• Redesign animation of curves tessellated into poly-tubes: keep keyframe data of curves in LSS form and only tessellate the first frame of animation into a mesh that is then animated and rendered.
• Fix mismatch of pack and unpack SVO hit data.
• Add mesh vertex animation support.
• Fix ambiguous usage of Dynamic in Scene data structures when referring to meshes.
• Add accessors to Scene and MaterialSystem to query geometries and type conformances by material type.
• Add image test for ray tracing program with createDynamicDispatch and hit groups specialized by type conformances.

• Add option to toggle camera controls.

Materials

• IBSDF::eval() now expects a sampler for probabilistic BSDF evaluations.

Spectra

• Add PiecewiseLinearSpectrum, DenseleySampledSpectrum and BlackbodySpectrum classes.
• Add spectrumToXYZ and spectrumToRGB functions to convert any of these spectra to XYZ and RGB (needs to be expanded to support more color spaces in the future).
• Add a library of useful named spectra that PBRT uses (illuminants, ior, sensor responses etc.).
• Add SampledSpectrum<T> utility class for uniformly sampled spectral data.
• Add CIE 1931 XYZ curves and D65 illuminant as SampledSpectrum.
• Add wavelengthToD65() and wavelengthToRGB() utility functions.
• Add a SpectrumUI<T> class for drawing a spectrum UI. Uses ImGui basics + Gui::Widgets.

Render Passes

• ModulateIllumination pass now can composite various delta buffers.
• Add work-in-progress SDF editor render pass.

PathTracer

• Add generation of delta guide buffers to PathTracer.
• Cleanup output buffer table.
• Update PathTracer pass to specialize hit groups by material type.
• Fix program specialization in PathTracer to fix scene reload bug.
• Add image test for scene reload case.

NRD

• Update the code to work with the latest version of the NRD SDK.
• Add delta motion vectors optimization pass.
• Update shader search path (we don't need to include Externals/.packman directly anymore).
• Expose ReBLUR and ReLAX Diffuse-only denoisers and SpecularReflectionMvec pass from NRD in NRDPass.
• Add Enabled toggle to all passes exposed in NRDPass.
• Add a toggle to switch between ReLAX and ReBLUR in runtime.

RTXGI

• Add RTXGIVolume, an interface to the RTXGI SDK.
• Add RTXGIPass, a standalone render pass using RTXGI.

PBRT Importer

• Add a scene importer for .pbrt scene files (pbrt-v4).
• Only supports a subset of the full pbrt-v4 scene definition, see Source/Falcor/Scene/Importers/PBRTImporter/README.md for more details.
• Materials are converted to the Falcor StandardMaterial undergoing many approximations.
• Texture support is very limited (only constant and bitmap textures for now).
• There is no support for curve geometry.
• There is very limited support for light sources, only diffuse area lights, distant lights and infinite (constant, envmap) is supported.

USD Importer

• Don't set camera speed if USD stage dimensions are bogus.
• Fix issue with USD importer computing the wrong number of expected normals.

5.0

Overview

This release of Falcor introduces a significant number of changes, including new features, improvements to existing functionality, and code reorganization. Some of the more notable changes include:

• The addition of a new USD scene importer.
• The material system has been rewritten to allow handling of different material types, and to accommodate future extensions.
• A new reference PathTracer render pass has been added, in favor of the now-deprecated MegakernelPathTracer.
• The RTXDI SDK for computing direct illumination on many lights has been integrated. It is available in a standlone RTXDIPass render pass and as a sampler for direct illumination in PathTracer.
• Render passes for NRD (denoising) and DLSS (antialiasing/upscaling) have been added.
• A new API backend GFX based on Slang is currently under development to allow future support for Vulkan, some additions for which are reflected in this release.

Dependencies

• Update dxc to version 1.6.2106
• Add support for D3D12 Agility SDK.
• Update Slang to 0.20.0.
• Add libfmt formatting library (will be replaced with <format> when switching to C++20).

Build system

• Remove DebugVK and ReleaseVK build configurations.
• Add DebugGFX and ReleaseGFX build configurations (GFX backend is not functional yet).
• Add msbuild.py, which builds Falcor using msbuild.exe, rather than devenv.exe, as vsbuild.bat does.
• Pull compiler tools and windows SDK components from packman.
• Add agent-specific build_falcor.py that uses msbuild.

Documentation

• Fix CUDA installation and usage instructions.
• Fix Optix installation instructions.
• Add development documentation:
  • Coding conventions
  • Error handling & logging
  • Unit testing
• Add known issues.
• Add documentation for the material system in Docs/Usage/Materials.md.
• Fix outdated scene docs.

Error handling

• Add Exception implementing std::exception.
• Add RuntimeError, ArgumentError and ImportError exception classes.
• Add exception constructors taking format strings for convenience.
• Add checkInvariant and checkArgument helpers.
• Update code base to use Falcor exception classes throughout.

Core

• Add float16_t type for binary16 numbers on the host with python bindings.
• Add float16_t2, float16_t3, and float16_t4 host side types.
• Add convenience functions on float16 vector types.
• Separate logging from error reporting:
  • log* functions only take a string and log it to the selected outputs.
  • Use std::string_view for passing log strings.
  • Add overloads for logging with format strings.
  • Convert existing logging calls to use format strings.
  • Remove Logger::logToConsole, Logger::shouldLogToConsole, Logger::showBoxOnError, isBoxShownOnError.
  • Add Logger::getVerbosity.
  • Add Logger::setOutputs and Logger::getOutputs to select the outputs to log to (Logger::OutputFlags).
  • Add global reportError, reportErrorAndAllowRetry and reportFatalError functions to report errors to the user by logging and showing a message box.
  • Add global setShowMessageBoxOnError and getShowMessageBoxOnError to enable/disable showing message boxes.
• Fix bug in GUI::addDropdown when using an empty list.
• Fix bug with UI buffer allocation when there are no UI elements.
• Fix validation error in ComputeParallelReduction.

API

• Remove Vulkan backend.
• Cleanup code around FALCOR_VK.
• Rename FALCOR_VK to FALCOR_FLIP_Y in places where NDC handedness matters (undefined for now).
• Remove support for 5.x shading model.
• Add support for querying shader model support on Device.
  • Use Device::getSupportedShaderModel to get highest supported shader model.
  • Use Device::isShaderModelSupported to check if a shader model is supported.
• Enable debug layer check that was previously broken (do not hide debug message about overlapping descriptor ranges anymore).
• Add to Program the ability to specify which type implementations to an interface should be included in a ProgramVersion.
• Add getCompilerArguments and setCompilerArguments to Program::Desc, allowing to set custom compiler arguments.
• Better align API of RtProgram::Desc with Program::Desc (remove shader defines).
• Fix clearing uint render outputs.
• Add RayFlags enum and improve test to make sure flags match up with shader side.
• Add getRaytracingMaxAttributeSize().
• Add Core/API/Raytracing.h with RtPipelineFlags enum and RtAABB struct.
• Move RtProgram to Core/Program/RtProgram.
• Move RtProgramVars to Core/Program/ProgramVars.
• Move RtBindingTable to Core/Program/RtBindingTable.
• Move RtStateObject to Core/API/RtStateObject and moved D3D12 implementation to D3D12RtStateObject.
• Move ShaderTable to Core/API/ShaderTable and moved D3D12 details to D3D12ShaderTable.
• Remove support for local root signatures in shader binding table.
• Add ParameterBlock::setAccelerationStructure(const BindLocation& loc, RtAccelerationStructure::SharedPtr).
• Add ShaderVars::setAccelerationStructure(RtAccelerationStructure::SharedPtr).
• Make D3D12 implementation of RtAccelerationStructure hold a ShaderResourceView that is created on-demand.
• Rename DescriptorSet to D3D12DescriptorSet.
• Rename DescriptorPool to D3D12DescriptorPool.
• Move DescriptorPool::Type into ShaderResourceType.cpp:ShaderResourceType.
• Move contents of DescriptorSet.cpp into D3D12DescriptorSet.cpp
• Move contents of DescriptorPool.cpp into D3D12DescriptorPool.cpp
• Move DescriptorSet.h into Core/API/D3D12/D3D12DescriptorSet.h
• Move DescriptorPool.h into Core/API/D3D12/D3D12DescriptorPool.h
• Move Core/BufferTypes/ParameterBlock.h -> Core/API/ParameterBlock.h
• Move Core/BufferTypes/ParameterBlock.cpp -> Core/API/D3D12/D3D12ParameterBlock.cpp
• Move Core/Program/ProgramVars.h -> Core/API/ProgramVars.h
• Move Core/Program/ProgramVars.cpp -> Core/API/D3D12/D3D12ProgramVars.cpp.
• Move RenderContext::applyGraphicsVars and ComputeContext::applyComputeVars to D3D12 only.
• Move ProgramVars::apply to D3D12 only.
• Make ComputeContext::prepareForDispatch D3D12 only.
• Program::preprocessAndCreateProgramKernels now only generates shader binary code for D3D12 backend. For GFX, only the a IComponentType is needed to create a gfx::IShaderProgram.
• Move Blit render pass set up logic into shared BlitContext.h and BlitContext.cpp files.
• Move blit implementation from D3D12RenderContext.cpp to RenderContext.cpp so it may be shared between D3D12 and GFX.
• Move some functions from D3D12ParameterBlock.cpp into ParameterBlock.cpp so they can be shared between D3D12 and GFX.
• Return shared pointer from ResourceView::getResource().
• Wrap all uses of DescriptorSet in application code to FALCOR_D3D12.
• Wrap all protected member declaration in ParameterBlock to FALCOR_D3D12, because they are now D3D12 specific.
• Move implementation of ParameterBlock::createConstantBuffers from D3D12ParameterBlock.cpp to ParameterBlock.cpp.
• Fix assignment of bools to shader variables.
• Add error check to buffer creation that size > 0.
• Add validation check to detect buffers bound as SRV and UAV simultaneously.
• Fix bug in UAV clear caused by not using both CPU and GPU descriptors.
• Add error check that descriptor heap is shader visible when querying GPU handles.

Blit

• Add support for blitting between float and integer formats.
• Add error checks to RenderContext::blit() for unsupported combinations.
• Remove unused Blit.slang file.
• Optimize RenderContext::blit() to do a resource copy when possible.
• Update RenderContext::blit() API to use kMaxRect to specify the full rectangle (instead of -1).
• Fix shader compiler warnings when initializing the blit shader.

ImageIO

• Use nvtt for saving DDS textures.
• Add native support for DDS image loading, rather than relying on an external library.
• ImageIO::loadDDS now has original code instead of directly using the DDS loader provided by DirectXTex.
• Old DirectXTex implementations have been removed.
• Compressed images can now be directly saved again.

Utilities

• Fix removeLeadingWhitespace, removeTrailingWhitespace and removeLeadingTrailingWhitespace.
• Extend PrefixSum to support more than 2N^2 elements, where N is the group size.
• Fix PixelDebug when used for multiple shader dispatches within a single frame by not clearing the string hash table.
• Add utilities for packing/unpacking unorm8 to FormatConversion.slang.
• Add ImageProcessing utility class.
• Add interval arithmetic functions in Utils/Math/IntervalArithmetic.slang.
• Remove non-portable StringUtils::getClassTypeName() and StringUtils::getEnumTypeName().

Importer

• Use ImporterError exception for reporting errors during scene import.
• Add new USDImporter scene importer.

Scene

• Cleanup handling of scene defines and type conformances.
• Add Scene::UpdateFlags::SDFGridConfigChanged.
• Use the new acceleration structure abstraction in Scene.cpp for BLAS/TLAS creation. The existing raw D3D12 API calls have been replaced.
• Change Scene.cpp to call setAccelerationStructure instead of setSrv to bind TLAS.
• Remove pSrv from TlasData.
• Reorganizing BLAS/TLAS for curves: splitting the single BLAS/TLAS for procedural primitives into two (one for curves and the other for custom primitives).
• Handling transformations of cached curves using the scene graph and nodes.
• Improve error checks in SceneBuilder.
• Provide analytic light sampling functions that take random numbers directly instead of a ISampleGenerator.
• Extend EnvMap with additional methods to access the underlying map and helpers for...

5.0-preview

Overview

This release of Falcor introduces a significant number of changes, including new features, improvements to existing functionality, and code reorganization. Some of the more notable changes include:

• The addition of a new USD scene importer.
• The material system has been rewritten to allow handling of different material types, and to accommodate future extensions.
• A new reference PathTracer render pass has been added, in favor of the now-deprecated MegakernelPathTracer.
• A new API backend GFX based on Slang is currently under development to allow future support for Vulkan, some additions for which are reflected in this release.

Dependencies

• Update dxc to version 1.6.2106
• Add support for D3D12 Agility SDK.
• Update Slang to 0.19.24.
• Add libfmt formatting library (will be replaced with <format> when switching to C++20).

Build system

• Remove DebugVK and ReleaseVK build configurations.
• Add DebugGFX and ReleaseGFX build configurations (GFX backend is not functional yet).
• Add msbuild.py, which builds Falcor using msbuild.exe, rather than devenv.exe, as vsbuild.bat does.
• Pull compiler tools and windows SDK components from packman.
• Add agent-specific build_falcor.py that uses msbuild.

Documentation

• Fix CUDA installation and usage instructions.
• Fix Optix installation instructions.
• Add development documentation:
  • Coding conventions
  • Error handling & logging
  • Unit testing
• Add known issues.

Error handling

• Add Exception implementing std::exception.
• Add RuntimeError, ArgumentError and ImportError exception classes.
• Add exception constructors taking format strings for convenience.
• Add checkInvariant and checkArgument helpers.
• Update code base to use Falcor exception classes throughout.

Core

• Add float16_t type for binary16 numbers on the host with python bindings.
• Add float16_t2, float16_t3, and float16_t4 host side types.
• Add convenience functions on float16 vector types.
• Separate logging from error reporting:
  • log* functions only take a string and log it to the selected outputs.
  • Remove Logger::logToConsole, Logger::shouldLogToConsole, Logger::showBoxOnError, isBoxShownOnError.
  • Add Logger::getVerbosity.
  • Add Logger::setOutputs and Logger::getOutputs to select the outputs to log to (Logger::OutputFlags).
  • Add global reportError, reportErrorAndAllowRetry and reportFatalError functions to report errors to the user by logging and showing a message box.
  • Add global setShowMessageBoxOnError and getShowMessageBoxOnError to enable/disable showing message boxes.
• Fix bug in GUI::addDropdown when using an empty list.

API

• Remove Vulkan backend.
• Cleanup code around FALCOR_VK.
• Rename FALCOR_VK to FALCOR_FLIP_Y in places where NDC handedness matters (undefined for now).
• Remove support for 5.x shading model.
• Add support for querying shader model support on Device.
  • Use Device::getSupportedShaderModel to get highest supported shader model.
  • Use Device::isShaderModelSupported to check if a shader model is supported.
• Enable debug layer check that was previously broken (do not hide debug message about overlapping descriptor ranges anymore).
• Add to Program the ability to specify which type implementations to an interface should be included in a ProgramVersion.
• Add getCompilerArguments and setCompilerArguments to Program::Desc, allowing to set custom compiler arguments.
• Better align API of RtProgram::Desc with Program::Desc (remove shader defines).
• Fix clearing uint render outputs.
• Add RayFlags enum and improve test to make sure flags match up with shader side.
• Add getRaytracingMaxAttributeSize().
• Add Core/API/Raytracing.h with RtPipelineFlags enum and RtAABB struct.
• Move RtProgram to Core/Program/RtProgram.
• Move RtProgramVars to Core/Program/ProgramVars.
• Move RtBindingTable to Core/Program/RtBindingTable.
• Move RtStateObject to Core/API/RtStateObject and moved D3D12 implementation to D3D12RtStateObject.
• Move ShaderTable to Core/API/ShaderTable and moved D3D12 details to D3D12ShaderTable.
• Remove support for local root signatures in shader binding table.
• Add ParameterBlock::setAccelerationStructure(const BindLocation& loc, RtAccelerationStructure::SharedPtr).
• Add ShaderVars::setAccelerationStructure(RtAccelerationStructure::SharedPtr).
• Make D3D12 implementation of RtAccelerationStructure hold a ShaderResourceView that is created on-demand.
• Rename DescriptorSet to D3D12DescriptorSet.
• Rename DescriptorPool to D3D12DescriptorPool.
• Move DescriptorPool::Type into ShaderResourceType.cpp:ShaderResourceType.
• Move contents of DescriptorSet.cpp into D3D12DescriptorSet.cpp
• Move contents of DescriptorPool.cpp into D3D12DescriptorPool.cpp
• Move DescriptorSet.h into Core/API/D3D12/D3D12DescriptorSet.h
• Move DescriptorPool.h into Core/API/D3D12/D3D12DescriptorPool.h
• Move Core/BufferTypes/ParameterBlock.h -> Core/API/ParameterBlock.h
• Move Core/BufferTypes/ParameterBlock.cpp -> Core/API/D3D12/D3D12ParameterBlock.cpp
• Move Core/Program/ProgramVars.h -> Core/API/ProgramVars.h
• Move Core/Program/ProgramVars.cpp -> Core/API/D3D12/D3D12ProgramVars.cpp.
• Move RenderContext::applyGraphicsVars and ComputeContext::applyComputeVars to D3D12 only.
• Move ProgramVars::apply to D3D12 only.
• Make ComputeContext::prepareForDispatch D3D12 only.
• Program::preprocessAndCreateProgramKernels now only generates shader binary code for D3D12 backend. For GFX, only the a IComponentType is needed to create a gfx::IShaderProgram.
• Move Blit render pass set up logic into shared BlitContext.h and BlitContext.cpp files.
• Move blit implementation from D3D12RenderContext.cpp to RenderContext.cpp so it may be shared between D3D12 and GFX.
• Move some functions from D3D12ParameterBlock.cpp into ParameterBlock.cpp so they can be shared between D3D12 and GFX.
• Return shared pointer from ResourceView::getResource().
• Wrap all uses of DescriptorSet in application code to FALCOR_D3D12.
• Wrap all protected member declaration in ParameterBlock to FALCOR_D3D12, because they are now D3D12 specific.

Blit

• Add support for blitting between float and integer formats.
• Add error checks to RenderContext::blit() for unsupported combinations.
• Remove unused Blit.slang file.
• Optimize RenderContext::blit() to do a resource copy when possible.
• Update RenderContext::blit() API to use kMaxRect to specify the full rectangle (instead of -1).
• Fix shader compiler warnings when initializing the blit shader.

ImageIO

• Use nvtt for saving DDS textures.
• Add native support for DDS image loading, rather than relying on an external library.
• ImageIO::loadDDS now has original code instead of directly using the DDS loader provided by DirectXTex.
• Old DirectXTex implementations have been removed.
• Compressed images can now be directly saved again.

Utilities

• Fix removeLeadingWhitespace, removeTrailingWhitespace and removeLeadingTrailingWhitespace.
• Extend PrefixSum to support more than 2N^2 elements, where N is the group size.
• Fix PixelDebug when used for multiple shader dispatches within a single frame by not clearing the string hash table.
• Add utilities for packing/unpacking unorm8 to FormatConversion.slang.
• Add ImageProcessing utility class.
• Add interval arithmetic functions in Utils/Math/IntervalArithmetic.slang.
• Remove non-portable StringUtils::getClassTypeName() and StringUtils::getEnumTypeName().

Importer

• Use ImporterError exception for reporting errors during scene import.
• Add new USDImporter scene importer.

Scene

• Cleanup handling of scene defines and type conformances.
• Add Scene::UpdateFlags::SDFGridConfigChanged.
• Use the new acceleration structure abstraction in Scene.cpp for BLAS/TLAS creation. The existing raw D3D12 API calls have been replaced.
• Change Scene.cpp to call setAccelerationStructure instead of setSrv to bind TLAS.
• Remove pSrv from TlasData.
• Reorganizing BLAS/TLAS for curves: splitting the single BLAS/TLAS for procedural primitives into two (one for curves and the other for custom primitives).
• Handling transformations of cached curves using the scene graph and nodes.

Animation

• Fix hasCurveAnimations(): Return true if the cached curves have more than one keyframe.
• Modify Animation::addKeyframe() to avoid O(N^2) behavior when keyframes are added in temporal order.

Geometry

• Set instanceIndex and geometryIndex when creating instance data.
• Introduce GeometryInstanceData which unifies MeshInstanceData, CurveInstanceData and SDFGridInstanceData.
• Use single list of geometry instance data for Scene containing instances for all geometry types.
• Remove PrimitiveTypeFlags.
• Replace ScenePrimitiveTypes.slangh with SceneDefines.slangh.
• Introduce GeometryType which enumerates all available geometry types and GeometryTypeFlags which is a bitset thereof.
• Both GeometryType and GeometryTypeFlags use defines in SceneDefines.slangh to ensure consistency.
• Introduce Scene::hasGeometryTypes and Scene::hasGeometryType to check if scene contains specific geometry types.
• Introduce Scene::hasProceduralGeometry to check if scene contains procedural geometry types.
• Introduce SCENE_HAS_GEOMETRY_TYPE macro for shaders to check if scene contains a specific geometry type.
• Introduce SCENE_HAS_PROCEDURAL_GEOMETRY macro for shaders to check if scene contains procedural geometry types.

HitInfo

• PackedHitInfo uses either 128 bits or 64 bits (compressed mode)...

4.4

Dependencies

• Update Slang to 0.19.2.
• Add header-only lz4_stream library from https://github.com/laudrup/lz4_stream.
• Pull dxcompiler from packman instead of Windows SDK. Set to Oct 2020 binary release.

Core

• Add check for null DllHandle returned by loadDLL() in RenderPassLibrary::loadLibrary().
• Add parameter to GpuFence::create() to allow for sharing fence handles.
• Fix d3d12ResourceBarrier implementation.
• Log debug info during device creation.
• Set mCommandsPending flag in the context in ReadTextureTask. Fixes bug where subsequent texture reads would return nothing after the first call.
• Add dlldecl to ReadTextureTask.
• Add on a more complex version of RenderContext::blit() which allows to specify reduction operations (min/max/standard).
  • Complex blit is only used when necessary, standard blit is used otherwise.
  • This uses a new Sampler reduction parameter which maps to D3D filter reduction.
• Fix issue preventing multiple Falcor instances from loading the same render pass DLL.

Raytracing

• Fix reflection logic for RT entry points to be compatible with future Slang versions
• Refactor RtProgram to allow more flexible creation of raytracing programs.
• Add new RtBindingTable class to allow user to specify the mapping between raytracing shaders and scene geometries.
• Refactor how RtProgramVars is created, it now takes a RtBindingTable parameter instead of Scene.
• Add TestRtProgram pass and image tests for testing the new raytracing interfaces.
• Add support for DXR 1.1 raytracing pipeline flags.
• Fail gracefully if raytracing is not supported on the current device.

Profiler

• Improved UI (better overview, relative CPU/GPU time bars, tooltips with stats, graph showing history, pause/resume, capture).
• Profile capturing and saving to JSON files (including stats).
• Add documentation for Python profiler API.

Scripting

• Make deferred script bindings be executed in order.
• Initialize script bindings consistently before runInternal in both Sample::run versions.
• Add Python pickle support for vec types.
• Extend Python API for RenderPass.
• Add pickle support to python struct bindings created with the SerializableStruct helper.
• Setup __file__ in Python environment executed by Falcor.

Texture

• Add a new min/max MIP pyramid creation to textures.
• Move Texture::createFromFile() implementation to Texture.cpp and remove TextureLoader.cpp.
• Add HDR image format to HDR image filters.
• Flip PFM images when loaded (they are loaded flipped due to a bug).
• Fix grayscale image loading from PNG. 16 bit greyscale PNG files were incorrectly loaded as ResourceFormat::RG8Unorm. This fix disambiguates two channel 8 bit textures from one channel 16 bit ones, and assigns format ResourceFormat::R16Unorm when needed.
• Add ability to generate mips when saving DDS textures to disk.
• Add support for volume textures in ImageIO::saveToDDS and fix associated bug that was uncovered in D3D12CopyContext as a result of the new feature.

Scene

• Add Scene interfaces for enumerating all geometries (meshes, curves, and custom primitives).
• Refactor/cleanup how intersection types and AABBs were handled in Scene.
• Export interface for creating custom primitives from Python.
• Updated scripting documentation.
• Add conditions for refitting TLASes when it is needed.
• Make HitInfo a container for storing polymorphic hit information (TriangleHit, DisplacedTriangleHit and CurveHit).
• Update HitInfo to have a None type to be able to represent no hit more cleanly.
• Add GeometryInstanceID type to enumerate instances on the GPU side instead of plain uint.
• Replace meshInstanceID with GeometryInstanceID in all Scene accessors on the GPU.
• Fix some robustness issues where only triangle hits were assumed.
• Add updateCallback to Scene to procedurally update scene at the start of each frame.
• Add an Scene::Metadata struct that holds optional metadata, set by an importer, regarding how the scene should be rendered.
  • Parameters can be queried by passes in their setScene() method, as demonstrated in the ToneMapper pass.
• Move global gRtScene to Scene.rtAccel.
• Add support for dynamically adding/removing custom primitives.
• Add Scene update flag to indicate that geometry changed (added/removed).
• Improve support for custom primitives: metadata buffer and indexing.
• Add Scene interface for updating custom primitive AABBs.
  • Trigger acceleration structure refit/rebuild upon procedural primitive updates.
• Some refactoring of Scene to prepare for unification of geometry types.
• Update ray query interface to ignore unsupported geometry types.
• Add testing code for scene geometry editing.
• Add a mesh-binding transform parameter in the scene graph for use by skinned meshes.
• Cleaned up some leftover usage of glm::mat4
• Fix a couple places where cameras and other Animatable objects aren't using -Z for their forward direction.
• Add ISceneRayQuery, an abstract interface to intersect rays against the scene.
• Add SceneRayQuery implementation in RaytracingInline to intersect rays against the scene using TraceRayInline.
• Make use of SceneRayQuery in SceneDebugger, VBufferRT and GBufferRT passes.
• Add TextureAnalyzer utility for analyzing texture content.
• Extend TextureAnalyzer util to compute min/max and range flags.
• Replace custom HitShaderParams uniform with using DXR Tier 1.1 GeometryIndex().
• Add scene stats for opaque vs non-opaque geometries for ray tracing.
• Update Scene::rasterize interface to take cull mode parameter or separate raster states, to fix backface culling.
  • Update GBufferRaster, ModelViewer, SkyBox to use new Scene::rasterize interface.
• Add SceneBuilder pass to make triangle winding consistent in object space, which is a requirement for backface culling.
• Update Scene TLAS build to set per-instance triangle winding flag correctly.
• Add image test to verify backface culling with CW/CCW winding and/or with instance transforms that flip winding.
• Fix asynchronous scene cache texture loading.
• Add SceneCache to serialize/deserialize Scene:SceneData.
• Add scene caching support to SceneBuilder.
• Introduce SceneData to pass data when creating a Scene object.
• Check mesh instance triangle winding flag when preparing draw argument buffers in Scene.
• Issue warning for non-affine node transforms and force last row to (0,0,0,1).
• Discard w-component of world-space position in raster code to match ray tracing behavior.
• Fix Scene logic to disable use of analytic lights in path tracer when all lights are inactive.
• Add SceneBuilder optimization to collapse directed subgraphs of static transform nodes.
• Add SceneBuilder optimization to merge identical static transform nodes.
• Extend SceneDebugger to show mesh instance information, including the transform hierarchy for the selected mesh.
• Add scene defines after loading. They can help the shader code to dynamically decide on ray query flags, creation of intersection shader programs, etc.
• Add SceneBuilder flag, FlattenStaticMeshInstances, that will create a unique mesh for each static instance by composing its transforms and duplicating mesh data. This will increase memory use, sometimes significantly.
  • Has no effect on non-instanced meshes, dynamic meshes, animated instances, or non-mesh primitives.
  • Subsequent SceneBuilder optimization passes, such as pretransformStaticMeshes(), can further optimize the flattened scene graph.
• Add optimization to SceneBuilder to extract instances for groups of meshes.
• Meshes for instanced mesh groups are by default merged into a BLAS. Use RTDontMergeInstanced to disable.
• Clean up TLAS instance description setup in Scene.
• Add SceneBuilder::getLight.
• Add scene stats for opaque vs non-opaque materials, make all stats serialized to Python.
• Add material optimization pass to SceneBuilder to replace constant textures by uniform material parameters.
• Add waitForMaterialTextureLoading to SceneBuilder.
• When a vertex attribute (e.g., texture coordinates) is missing, use a default value.
• Allow disabling displacement maps with new DontUseDisplacement scene builder flag.
• Add option to SceneBuilder::processMesh() to return the indices per attribute used to generate the final mesh.
• Add inverse transpose matrices of previous frame in Scene.
• Fix indexing into shader binding table by sorting meshes within mesh groups.

Scene Importers

• Remove deprecated fscene support.
• Allow retrying when python scene loader fails.
• Log error if .pyscene is recursively imported.
• Fix loading nested pyscene files (not removing data path if still used by parent importer).
• Fix GLTF2 animation loading.
• Fix GLTF2 point light loading.

Animation

• Add AnimatedVertexCache, which is in charge of updating animated curve vertices and related AABBs.
• Allow skinned meshes to use the transform from somewhere else in the scene graph for skinning.
• Separate bind matrix and world matrix indices in DynamicVertexData.
• Fix toggle scene animations (missed TLAS update).
• Improve AnimationController behavior when enabling/disabling it.
• Update previous frame data for one more frame when pausing animations to get correct motion vectors.
• Improve performance of AnimationController by only updating/uploading animated matrices.
• Fix issue with animated lights not updating.

Geometry

• Extend TriangleMesh utility class to handle negative scaling and clockwise triangle winding.
• Flip UVs in TriangleMesh::createFromFile.
• Add CurveIntersector helper to unify curve intersection code between dispatch ray and ra...