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Learning Vulkan
Learning Vulkan

Learning Vulkan: Discover how to build impressive 3D graphics with the next-generation graphics API—Vulkan

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Learning Vulkan

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Key benefits

  • Get started with the Vulkan API and its programming techniques using the easy-to-follow examples to create stunning 3D graphics
  • Understand memory management in Vulkan and implement image and buffer resources
  • Get hands-on with the drawing process and synchronization, and render a 3D graphics scene with the Vulkan graphics pipeline

Description

Vulkan, the next generation graphics and compute API, is the latest offering by Khronos. This API is the successor of OpenGL and unlike OpenGL, it offers great flexibility and high performance capabilities to control modern GPU devices. With this book, you'll get great insights into the workings of Vulkan and how you can make stunning graphics run with minimum hardware requirements. We begin with a brief introduction to the Vulkan system and show you its distinct features with the successor to the OpenGL API. First, you will see how to establish a connection with hardware devices to query the available queues, memory types, and capabilities offered. Vulkan is verbose, so before diving deep into programing, you’ll get to grips with debugging techniques so even first-timers can overcome error traps using Vulkan’s layer and extension features. You’ll get a grip on command buffers and acquire the knowledge to record various operation commands into command buffer and submit it to a proper queue for GPU processing. We’ll take a detailed look at memory management and demonstrate the use of buffer and image resources to create drawing textures and image views for the presentation engine and vertex buffers to store geometry information. You'll get a brief overview of SPIR-V, the new way to manage shaders, and you'll define the drawing operations as a single unit of work in the Render pass with the help of attachments and subpasses. You'll also create frame buffers and build a solid graphics pipeline, as well as making use of the synchronizing mechanism to manage GPU and CPU hand-shaking. By the end, you’ll know everything you need to know to get your hands dirty with the coolest Graphics API on the block.

Who is this book for?

This book is ideal for graphic programmers who want to get up and running with Vulkan. It’s also great for programmers who have experience with OpenGL and other graphic APIs who want to take advantage of next generation APIs. A good knowledge of C/C++ is expected.

What you will learn

  • Implement device, command buffer and queues to get connected with the physical hardware
  • Get a grip on memory management to control host and device memory operations
  • Understand and implement buffer and image resource types in Vulkan
  • Define drawing operations in the Render pass and implement graphics pipeline
  • Learn the drawing process, manage resources with synchronization objects and render 3D scene output on screen with Swapchain
  • Bring realism to your rendered 3D scene with textures, and implement linear and optimal textures

Product Details

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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Dec 15, 2016
Length: 466 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781786469809
Languages :
Tools :

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Product feature icon A monthly credit and 50% off any future digital purchases.

Product Details

Publication date : Dec 15, 2016
Length: 466 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781786469809
Languages :
Tools :

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Frequently bought together


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Total $ 134.97
Vulkan Cookbook
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Learning Vulkan
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Total $ 134.97 Stars icon

Table of Contents

11 Chapters
1. Getting Started with the NextGen 3D Graphics API Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
2. Your First Vulkan Pseudo Program Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
3. Shaking Hands with the Device Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
4. Debugging in Vulkan Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
5. Command Buffer and Memory Management in Vulkan Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
6. Allocating Image Resources and Building a Swapchain with WSI Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
7. Buffer Resource, Render Pass, Framebuffer, and Shaders with SPIR-V Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
8. Pipelines and Pipeline State Management Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
9. Drawing Objects Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
10. Descriptors and Push Constant Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
11. Drawing Textures Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Top Reviews
Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Half star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 2.9
(12 Ratings)
5 star 33.3%
4 star 8.3%
3 star 8.3%
2 star 16.7%
1 star 33.3%
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Top Reviews

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Amazon Customer Feb 20, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
A very good, informative and easy to approach book for a beginner. Just finished reading it and learnt a lot.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Hurricane san Jan 02, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
This the best book on Vulkan so far, in my opinion of course. I felt my understanding on Vulkan improving a lot reading this. (Before this I had the Vulkan Programming Guide that for some reason felt like barely an improvement over the public API documents).It may help you too.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Cliente Amazon Jun 02, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Perfect book to start to learn Vulkan.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
cybereality Mar 02, 2017
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Learning Vulkan by Parminder Singh is an excellent foray into the Vulkan graphics API and quite a competent book. The text is a reasonable 466 pages, and packs a lot in there. Singh covers all the basics of using Vulkan and goes into great detail at each step of the way. Not only is there actual C++ code shown (a lot of it), but he explains each API call and what objects to pass it, a breakdown of each object structure and what it does, what’s valid (or invalid) for data you can put in, and so forth. I have not read the official Vulkan Programming Guide yet (that’s coming next) so I’m not able to compare them here. However, this book is an absolute treasure trove of information, and presented with clear context, not just a copy and paste of API docs.While the book is not particularly long, the author does manage to cover a good amount of ground. Of the topics included are: getting started with the LunarG SDK, initializing the API, debugging, command buffers and memory management, allocating image resources and the swapchain, buffers, render passes, framebuffers, working with SPIR-V shaders, pipelines and pipeline state management, descriptors and push constants, and finally drawing a textured polygon. I’m still getting acquainted with Vulkan myself, but this does seem to touch on all the fundamental topics to get started with the API. It really seems like Parminder Singh knows what he is talking about and feel I learned a lot finishing this text.One thing to keep in mind, this is not really a book about graphics programming techniques, but rather a survey of the API. Meaning, unlike Frank Luna’s DirectX books, you won’t have any cool demos to showcase at the end. Through the whole book you’re basically just working with the initialization of the Vulkan API, though you do end up with a colored triangle and finally a textured cube. This is honestly fine, and just what is needed at this point in the life of Vulkan. Flashy demos are cool, sure, but once you have the fundamentals down, it shouldn’t be hard to apply that knowledge, or port techniques from other APIs.I will note, however, that I wish there was more discussion into the performance cost or characteristics of parts of the Vulkan API. For example, sometimes there are multiple ways to perform an action (like with uniform buffers or push constants getting data into a shader) and there wasn’t much explanation as to when to do one thing over the other. This is not a huge concern, as there are lots of articles online covering these types of things and it seems the book is there to get you familiar with the concepts and data structures to allow you to do your own research later. Certainly, I still have a lot of questions but I can’t imagine a more thorough book as an introduction to this relatively new API.Some familiarity with older graphics APIs will probably help, but I don’t think it’s absolutely needed. In my opinion, if you are wanting to learn graphics programming today, you might as well just jump into Vulkan (or DirectX12, if you prefer) as the industry will quickly adopt these new, lower-level APIs and you will be setting yourself up for the future. Do understand, though, that Vulkan is extremely verbose and needs something like 1,000 lines of code just to get a triangle on the screen. So stark beginners may be put off by that complexity. And you should definitely have good working knowledge of C++ before getting into this. With that in mind, however, I think that Learning Vulkan by Parminder Singh is a great place to start to delve into this exciting new world of Vulkan. Well worth reading.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
David Eberly May 19, 2026
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
The author talks more about syntax, less about semantics. I found that your book Mastering Graphics Programming with Vulkan more advanced and helpful.
Feefo Verified review Feefo
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