DEVLOG 27 - Material System

Intro
After some code rewrites, such as the separation between shaders and materials, the materials system now works. It’s very similar to how it works in Unity. I’ve figured out how to set things like material properties (floats, integers, vectors, etc.) directly from C++ using their names, without manually binding code.
 
How Vulkan Handle All Of This?
In Vulkan, you can’t set a shader parameter directly with a name. You need to create a buffer on the GPU, specifically a UBO, typically used for materials, bind it using a descriptor, and then bind it on the CPU. All of this is hidden by Eve, making the code easier and faster to write.
 
What It Does?
Basically, once the shader is compiled, it’s analyzed and checked for a struct called Properties. If it exists, this struct will be used for the material properties. Each field within it will be settable directly from the CPU using its name. Eve, now knowing the size of the struct and the field offsets, creates a buffer for the materials (actually, one for each frame in flight) and uses it to write everything a material might need, thus allowing for very simple parameter setting.
 
How To Use It:
The material provides an ID via the GetPropertyUBOId function, which must always be retrieved at each frame since it is not the same from frame to frame. This ID can be sent to the shader via push constant, which then allows access to the material’s property UBO, which contains all the values ​​set on the CPU side.
 
A simple cube rotating on itself using the new Material System and simple direct lighting