Deferred renderer with deferred, depth-peeling transparency

This project is a OpenGL 4.6 deferred renderer with deferred, depth peeling based transparency. More info on the technique and related pictures can be found on the report.

Build guide

The OpenGL-based project can be built through the CMake build system in the native OS. The following paragraphs will guide you through the compilation of the project depending on your platform of choice.

Windows

Pre-requisites:

• Git Bash (for issuing unix-style commands)
• MinGW-w64 (GCC 11.2.0 or higher)
• CMake 3.18 (or higher)

It is recommended to install MinGW-w64 and CMake through MSYS2 in order to get the latest version of MinGW-w64's GCC and CMake. To do so:

• Download and install MSYS2.
• Run "MSYS2 MSYS" from the start menu; a terminal will appear.
• Run pacman -Syu; a restart of all MSYS2 processes is required at the end of the update.
• Run "MSYS2 MSYS" again, and run pacman -Su.
• Run pacman -S --needed base-devel mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain to install the MinGW-w64 toolchain.
• Run pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake to install CMake.
• Run pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-make to install MinGW-w64's make tool (used by CMake).

After the installation of these packages, make sure to add their path to the PATH environment variable (e.g., by editing the .bashrc file in your home). They should reside in MSYS2's installation folder as such:

C:\msys64\mingw64\bin

but the actual path may vary depending on your installation (GCC's and CMake's binaries are already in PATH if you execute the "MSYS2 MinGW x64" shortcut from the start menu). Then, you should be able to build the whole project with CMake through:

cmake -S ./ -B ./bin -G "MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -Wno-dev
cmake --build ./bin/

Linux

Pre-requisites:

• Xorg-dev package (X11)
• G++ 9 (or higher)
• CMake 3.18 (or higher)

To install these packages on Ubuntu, type the following command:

sudo apt-get install xorg-dev g++ cmake

Then, you should be able to build the whole project with CMake through:

cmake -S ./ -B ./bin -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -Wno-dev
cmake --build ./bin/

MacOS

Pre-requisites:

• Xcode Command Line Tools
• CMake 3.18 (or higher)

To install them, assuming you have the brew package manager, type the following commands:

xcode-select --install
brew install cmake

Then, you should be able to build the whole project with CMake through:

cmake -S ./ -B ./bin -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -Wno-dev
cmake --build ./bin/

Build tips

There are be some tips that you may find useful while compiling this project with CMake.

Avoid to re-build heavy libraries

If you're editing source files of your project, you might not want to re-build external libraries again, especially Assimp and Bullet Physics. This might become a time wasting issue while debugging your code. To prevent this, remember to generate the makefiles only when the structure of the project changes (e.g.: the source list has changed). Therefore, just hit cmake --build ./bin/ and external libraries shouldn't recompile again.

Clean builds

When you modify the project structure heavily, it's advised to delete the current ./bin folder and repeat the build process from the ground up in order to get a clean build. No longer useful files of a previous build (e.g.: an object file of a deleted .cpp file) might be kept in the ./bin folder. Yet, this can be avoided if you know what you're doing. For instance, if you incrementally add more files into the source list of the project, the build should still be clean.