Filament

This package contains several executables and libraries you can use to build applications using Filament. Latest versions are available on the project page.

Binaries

• cmgen, Image-based lighting asset generator
• filamesh, Mesh converter
• glslminifier, Tool to minify GLSL shaders
• gltf_viewer, glTF 2.0 viewer that lets you explore many features of Filament
• matc, Material compiler
• material_sandbox, simple mesh viewer that lets you explore material and lighting features
• matinfo, Displays information about materials compiled with matc
• mipgen, Generates a series of miplevels from a source image.
• normal-blending, Tool to blend normal maps
• resgen, Tool to convert files into binary resources to be embedded at compie time
• roughness-prefilter, Pre-filters a roughness map from a normal map to reduce aliasing
• specular-color, Computes the specular color of conductors based on spectral data

You can refer to the individual documentation files in docs/ for more information.

Libraries

Filament is distributed as a set of static libraries you must link against:

• backend, Required, implements all backends
• bluegl, Required to render with OpenGL or OpenGL ES
• bluevk, Required to render with Vulkan
• filabridge, Support library for Filament
• filaflat, Support library for Filament
• filament, Main Filament library
• backend, Filament render backend library
• ibl, Image-based lighting support library
• utils, Support library for Filament
• geometry, Geometry helper library for Filament
• smol-v, SPIR-V compression library, used only with Vulkan support

To use Filament from Java you must use the following two libraries instead:

• filament-java.jar, Contains Filament's Java classes
• filament-jni, Filament's JNI bindings

To link against debug builds of Filament, you must also link against:

• matdbg, Support library that adds an interactive web-based debugger to Filament

To use the Vulkan backend on macOS you must also make the following libraries available at runtime:

• MoltenVK_icd.json
• libMoltenVK.dylib
• libvulkan.1.dylib

Linking against Filament

This walkthrough will get you successfully compiling and linking native code against Filament with minimum dependencies.

To start, download Filament's latest binary release and extract into a directory of your choosing. Binary releases are suffixed with the platform name, for example, filament-20181009-linux.tgz.

Create a file, main.cpp, in the same directory with the following contents:

#include <filament/FilamentAPI.h>
#include <filament/Engine.h>

using namespace filament;

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    Engine *engine = Engine::create();
    engine->destroy(&engine);
    return 0;
}

The directory should look like:

|-- README.md
|-- bin
|-- docs
|-- include
|-- lib
|-- main.cpp

We'll use a platform-specific Makefile to compile and link main.cpp with Filament's libraries. Copy your platform's Makefile below into a Makefile inside the same directory.

Linux

FILAMENT_LIBS=-lfilament -lbackend -lbluegl -lbluevk -lfilabridge -lfilaflat -lutils -lgeometry -lsmol-v -lvkshaders -libl
CC=clang++

main: main.o
	$(CC) -Llib/x86_64/ main.o $(FILAMENT_LIBS) -lpthread -lc++ -ldl -o main

main.o: main.cpp
	$(CC) -Iinclude/ -std=c++17 -pthread -c main.cpp

clean:
	rm -f main main.o

.PHONY: clean

macOS

FILAMENT_LIBS=-lfilament -lbackend -lbluegl -lbluevk -lfilabridge -lfilaflat -lutils -lgeometry -lsmol-v -lvkshaders -libl
FRAMEWORKS=-framework Cocoa -framework Metal -framework CoreVideo
CC=clang++

main: main.o
	$(CC) -Llib/x86_64/ main.o $(FILAMENT_LIBS) $(FRAMEWORKS) -o main

main.o: main.cpp
	$(CC) -Iinclude/ -std=c++17 -c main.cpp

clean:
	rm -f main main.o

.PHONY: clean

Windows

Note that the static libraries distributed for Windows include several variants: mt, md, mtd, mdd. These correspond to the run-time library flags /MT, /MD, /MTd, and /MDd, respectively. Here we use the mt variant. For the debug variants, be sure to also include matdbg.lib in FILAMENT_LIBS.

When building Filament from source, the USE_STATIC_CRT CMake option can be used to change the run-time library version.

FILAMENT_LIBS=filament.lib backend.lib bluegl.lib bluevk.lib filabridge.lib filaflat.lib \
              utils.lib geometry.lib smol-v.lib ibl.lib vkshaders.lib
CC=cl.exe

main.exe: main.obj
	$(CC) main.obj /link /libpath:"lib\\x86_64\\mt\\" $(FILAMENT_LIBS) \
	gdi32.lib user32.lib opengl32.lib

main.obj: main.cpp
	$(CC) /MT /Iinclude\\ /std:c++17 /c main.cpp

clean:
	del main.exe main.obj

.PHONY: clean

Compiling

You should be able to invoke make and run the executable successfully:

$ make
$ ./main
FEngine (64 bits) created at 0x106471000 (threading is enabled)

On Windows, you'll need to open up a Visual Studio Native Tools Command Prompt and invoke nmake instead of make.

Generating C++ documentation

To generate the documentation you must first install doxygen and graphviz, then run the following commands:

$ cd filament/filament
$ doxygen docs/doxygen/filament.doxygen

Finally simply open docs/html/index.html in your web browser.