Latest news:

Linux AMD64 port now available.

Quick start:

These instructions assume you have SBCL installed on your system with asdf and quicklisp. If you have a macOS port of SBCL that is single threaded, you can easily build a multithreaded version, but the single thread version should run the VkTk Demo just fine.

Install vulkan sdk.

git clone https://github.com/awolven/VkTk.git <vktk-dir>

Where <vktk-dir> is a placeholder for the directory you want git to create. Pick a directory name to use there. (Defaults to VkTk.)

cd <vktk-dir>

git submodule update --init --recursive

cd cimgui

git checkout cimgui-cffi

cd ..

Edit ifc/foreign-libraries.lisp:

Change *vktk-dir* to point to your <vktk-dir>.

Change *vulkan-sdk-path* to point to your vulkan sdk.

In emacs M-x slime.

(push "<vktk-dir>/" asdf:*central-registry*)

(asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op :vktk)

There currently is no standalone demo for vktk. That is a todo item. There is, however, a demo of VkTk functionality combined with oc. oc is an interface to the OpenCASCADE solid modeler. The demo shows vulkan functionality, imgui functionality and solid modeler functionality together. The idea is to turn this demo into an application. To install/run the demo, follow these additional instructions:

git clone https://github.com/awolven/oc.git

This operation may take a while as OpenCASCADE binaries are provided.

In slime:

(push "<oc-dir>/" asdf:*central-registry*)

(asdf:oos 'asdf:load-op :igp)

(igp::run-demo)

When the linux port was created, it was created on a virtual machine, so a software installable client driver was used: swiftshader. If you're running with a real vulkan capable graphics card, the performance should be fine. Swiftshader is a little slow.

What is vktk?

vktk is a library for programming Vulkan in Common Lisp.

"vktk" is an abbreviation for Vulkan Toolkit.

What can vktk do?

vktk provides an abstraction for Vulkan, GLFW, and ImGui.

Vulkan is an interactive 3d-graphics library specification with implementations on Windows, Linux, Android, and Mac. (vktk currently supports Windows, Mac, and Linux all on AMD64.) GLFW is a platform independent Windowing library, and ImGUI is a GUI library which supports interactive 3D libraries such as Vulkan, OpenGL and Direct3D.

Why Vulkan?

Vulkan aims to be the cross-platform accelerated 3D graphics library standard to replace OpenGL and is more flexible to program in threaded environments than OpenGL.

Why Common Lisp?

Common Lisp is a well supported, standardized, functional/imperative/object-oriented programming language that is designed to allow large applications to be written with it. Common Lisp is efficient and expressive but most of all I like it.

Why was vktk created?

I needed a 3D graphics/UI library for Computer Aided Design programming in Common Lisp. vktk has a sister project for using the OpenCascade solid modeler with Common Lisp.