ds_cinder
nanovg
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ds_cinder
- So you want to write a GUI framework
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Cinder – a C++ library for programming with aesthetic intent
I developed in Cinder about 10 years ago. The company I was working for was using openframeworks for a different project and I start looking at Cinder for new version with better features. I started building out a new framework on top of Cinder (https://github.com/Downstream/ds_cinder). It’s still actively developed today and has been used in making a lot of really cool interactive designs. It’s pretty cool to see this project still kicking.
nanovg
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So you want to write a GUI framework
BGFX is a general-purpose 3D graphics engine, not a GUI nor vector graphics framework.
Nanovg is an awesome vector graphics library, but has limitations. (1) no ClearType, I fixed in my fork: https://github.com/Const-me/nanovg (2) The only way to get AA is hardware MSAA, unfortunately many popular platforms like Raspberry Pi don’t have good enough hardware to do it fast enough. Nanogui is built on top of Nanovg, shares the limitations.
I agree with the OP that Cairo and Skia are the only viable ones for Linux.
It’s sad because Windows has Direct2D for decades now (introduced in Vista), and unlike 2006, now in 2021 Linux actually has all the lower-level pieces to implement a comparable equivalent. Here’s a proof of concept: https://github.com/Const-me/Vrmac#vector-graphics-engine
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2D Graphics on Modern GPU (2019)
> in your words, that "the quality is not good"
Oh, you were asking why I said so? Because I have clicked the “notes document” link in the article, the OP used the same tiger test image as me, and that document has a couple of screenshots. And these were the only screenshots I have found. Compare them to screenshots of the same vector image rendered by my library, and you’ll see why I noted about the quality.
> Vrmacs draws paths by decomposing them into triangles, rendering them with the GPU rasterizer, and antialiasing edges using screen-space derivatives in the fragment shader.
More or less, but (a) not always, thin lines are different. (b) that’s a high-level overview but there’re many important details on the lower levels. For instance, “screen-space derivatives of what?” is an interesting question, critically important for correct and uniform stroke widths. The meshes I’m building are rotation-agnostic, and to some extent (but not completely) they are resolution-agnostic too.
> and it is perfectly capable of rendering high-quality small text on the GPU
It is, but the performance overhead is massive, compared to GPU rasterizer rendering these triangles. For real-world vector graphics that doesn’t have too much stuff per pixel that complexity is not needed because triangle meshes are good enough already.
> it looks like it occupies a sweet spot similar to NanoVG
They’re similarities, I have copy-pasted a few text-related things from my fork of NanoVG: https://github.com/Const-me/nanovg/ However, Vrmac delivers much higher quality of 2D vector graphics (VAA, circular arcs, thin strokes, etc), is much faster (meshes are typically reused across frames), and is more compatible (GL support on Windows or OSX is not good, you want D3D or Metal respectively).
What are some alternatives?
AutoLyrixAlign - Pre-trained model and script to automatically align lyrics to polyphonic audio
vello - An experimental GPU compute-centric 2D renderer.
jolikit - Java APIs to abstract away time (clocks, schedulers), simple 2D UIs (BWD), and a bit more, with default implementations
bgfx - Cross-platform, graphics API agnostic, "Bring Your Own Engine/Framework" style rendering library.
nannou - A Creative Coding Framework for Rust.
libGDX - Desktop/Android/HTML5/iOS Java game development framework
VCSamples - Samples for VC++
msdfgen - Multi-channel signed distance field generator
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nanovg - Antialiased 2D vector drawing library on top of OpenGL for UI and visualizations.